Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century: Part I Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, Part I [Reprint 2014 ed.] 9780674337367, 9780674336230

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THE TERCENTENNIAL HISTORY OF HARVARD COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY 1636-1936

LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

COLLEGIUM CAN Т А BRIG IAE A.D. CONDITUM

HARVARDIAN UM IN NÖVAANGLIA MDCLXVIII j A D. ΜDCXXXVI

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HARVARD COLLEGE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BY SAMUEL ELIOT MORISON CLASS OF 1908

PART I

Cambridge, Massachusetts HARVARD UNIVERSITY 1936

PRESS

COPYRIGHT,

I936

BY T H E P R E S I D E N T A N D F E L L O W S O F H A R V A R D C O L L E G E

PRINTED AT T H E HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U . S . A .

PREFACE of this series, ' T h e Founding of Harvard College,' broke ground; the present volume picks up the story in 1650, when the first Charter was granted, and carries it through the seventeenth century and to 1708. T h e energetic Dunster crowns his many achievements by enlarging the College and adopting a four-year course; then comes to grief on antipaedobaptism. President Chauncy, aged, learned, and pious, establishes a norm by which the College will be measured for years after his death. Leonard Hoar takes the presidency full of high hopes for science; but for reasons still far from clear is baffled, thwarted, and forced to retire. T h e College then falls into a 'low and languishing state,' relieved by flashes of classical wit from the valetudinarian Oakes, and the building of Old Harvard Hall. T w o crowded decades follow, during which the efforts of devoted tutors, Leverett and Brattle, more than recover the ground lost, and establish our liberal tradition, while charters change and Mather the Olympian remains in Boston. A sharp political deal in 1707 restores the Charter of 1650, and logically concludes the puritan century of Harvard history. A N EARLIER VOLUME

Even so small an institution as seventeenth-century Harvard has many aspects; and some of these, such as Organization, Finance, Student Life, the College Library, and Indian Education, are the subjects of one or more chapters. N o less than seven chapters are devoted to the Arts and Sciences, Philosophy, and other branches studied in the College from 1640 to 1723; and all extant Commencement Theses and Quaestiones, are reprinted in an Appendix. These curricular chapters were the most difficult part of the book to write, and for many will be the least interesting to read; but I have no apology for making them so detailed. T h e subjects, materials, and methods of this early Harvard curriculum include the essential theme in College history, and form the first movement in American intellectual history. Higher education in the United States begins with the books that Harvard students read, the theses that they defended—and also (as I have not forgotten), with food and drink, and play and prayer.

PREFACE

vi

In printing manuscripts or excerpts therefrom, superior letters have been brought down to the line of text, and most of the common abbreviations of the period are expanded. Thus, the various forms of the ampersand become ' and,' y" becomes ' the,' y* ' t h a t , ' and the variously tailed p's are printed as 'per-,' 'pro-,' etc., as the context may require; ' q ' followed by a wiggle representing the Latin suffix '-que' is so printed. In spelling, punctuation, and the use of capitals, the liberties taken by each colonial scribe or printer, both with the learned tongues and with English, have in principle been respected; but I have occasionally lost patience with Cotton Mather's italics in the Magnalia, and with Mr. Secretary Rawson's long-tailed i's in the Massachusetts Records. The same devoted and learned collaborators who helped me with the 'Founding' and are mentioned in the preface thereof have continued their kind offices throughout the preparation of the present volume. Others, who have generously placed at my disposal their special knowledge in a multitude of subjects from the history of Accounting to the works of Girolamo Zanchi, are mentioned in the footnotes. And many Librarians, all the way from Bodley's to Mr. Huntington's, have been most prompt to answer inquiries, and ready to provide photostats of books and prints in their respective collections. T o all, once more, I return my Warmest thanks. S. Ε. M. HARVARD UNIVERSITY

November, 1935

CONTENTS P A R T

I

PREFACE

Ν

LIST

OF

ILLUSTRATIONS

LIST

OF A R M S

AND

ABBREVIATIONS I.

THE

IN

AND

MAPS

xi

SEALS

xvii

FOOTNOTES

CHARTER

OF

xxi

1650

3

The need for incorporation; text of the Charter, 5; style and form; Seal of 1650 and Appendix of 1657, 1 1 ; Fellows of Harvard College: relation to tutors, early developments, the five Charter Fellows, 13; the Treasurer, 22; privileges and immunities, 23. II.

DUNSTER

STRUGGLES

ON, 1650-1654

26

Financial situation in 1650; voluntary contributions of 1652-54, 27; Pequot lands, 31; private land grants, and annuities, 34; total revenue, 37. III.

' T o

INLARGE

OUR

ROOM,' 1 6 5 0 - 1 6 7 2

39

T h e Eleuthera Donation; Goffe College, 43; overflow chambers and studies, 46; Betts L o t and Meetinghouse, 47. IV.

THE

COLLEGE

ORGANIZATION

50

Fellows of the House (tutors), 51; College officers and servants, 53; academic 'quarters' and tuition, 56; seniority and classification of students, 58; the Class, 64; 'Sitting of Solstices,' Commencement, 67; the M . A . and the power to grant degrees, 69; college or university, 71. V.

T H E STUDENT AND HIS D A Y , 1 6 4 0 - 1 6 7 2

74

Age and social analysis: students from outside New England, 78; from B a y towns, 79; trials of the freshmen, 80; the Class, 83; chumming and costume, 85; the College day, 89; beer and bevers, meals, 90; proportioning commons, 98; payment in kind, 102; cost of college education, 106; scholarships, exhibitions, and other student aid, 107. VI.

COLLEGE

AMUSEMENTS, 1 6 4 0 - 1 6 7 2

n o

Vacations: lawful recreations, 112; pranks, brawls, and riots, 118; punishments, 121; students and tutors, 122; light reading, 124; almanac poets: Danforth, Shepard, Cheever, Flynt, and Russell, 132. VII.

THE

CURRICULUM:

PROGRAMMES, METHODS,

MATERI-

ALS, AND OBJECTS

Programme of 1642; tabular views, 141; sample disputation; Programme of 1655, 144; Programme of 1723, 146; requirements for the M.A., 148; text-books, 151; favorite authors, 157; Commencement theses and quaestiones, 159; general character, 165.

139

C O N T E N T S

Vlll VIII.

THE

CURRICULUM:

G R A M M A R , RHETORIC, AND L O G I C

169

Grammar and Alexander Nowell; Rhetoric, 172; 'Heathen Authors,' 174; manuals, phrase-books, apophthegms, 177; 'Prayse of Eloquence,' 179; Belcher's Latin Declamation, 184; Logic, 185; Ramus vs. Aristotle, 187; Burgersdicius to Descartes, 190. IX.

THE

CURRICULUM:

GREEK

AND H E B R E W

194

Greek Grammar; translation at prayers, 195; books and authors, 196; Hebrew: Dunster and Ravis, 200; books, subjects, and theses, 203. X.

THE

CURRICULUM:

MATHEMATICS

AND

ASTRONOMY

.

208

Arithmetic and Geometry; Practical Surveying and Navigation, 211; Astronomy, 214; Cambridge almanacs and the New Astronomy, 216; the College telescope, Thomas Brattle, and Isaac Newton, 219. XI.

THE

CURRICULUM:

PHYSICS

223

Peripatetic Physics, books and 'systems,' 224; theses physicae, Wigglesworth on vacuum, 227; transitional books, 232; Botany and Chemistry, 234; Morton's Compendium Physicae, 236; theses on the New Philosophy and Samuel Lee, 249. XII.

THE

CURRICULUM:

METAPHYSICS

AND

MORAL

PHI-

LOSOPHY

25A

Metaphysics; metaphysical quaestiones, 256; Politics, 258; Ethics, 260. XIII.

T H E CURRICULUM: HISTORY, THEOLOGY, AND M E D I C I N E

264

History and Geography; undergraduate Divinity, 267; Logical Analysis, 268; Theology for M . A . candidates, 272; theological quaestiones, 275; Whiting on eternity, 277; Medicine, autopsies, and quaestiones, 281. XIV.

THE

COLLEGE

LIBRARY, 1655-1723

285

Library laws and librarians, 286; Lightfoot acquisition and Gale bequest, 289; Baxter and Maynard donations, 291; Catalogue of 1723, 293. XV.

THE

LAST

YEARS

OF

DUNSTER, 1652-1659

298

Recognition of Harvard degrees in England; four-year course adopted, 300; financial investigation of 1653-54, 302; controversy over infant baptism, 305; Dunster's resignation, and last winter in Cambridge, 307; Scituate, Glover law suits, Irish invitation, death and will, 315. XVI.

CHARLES

CHAUNCY,

PRESIDENT, 1 6 5 4 - ^ 6 7 2

320

Career in England and New Plymouth; President Chauncy, 323; College Laws of 1655, 327; declining enthusiasm for learning and grammar schools, 329; stars and sensations, regicides and Quakers, 334; discontent, revival, and death, 336. XVII.

THE

INDIAN

COLLEGE

AND

PRESS, 1 6 5 5 - 1 6 9 8

. . . .

Formation of the New England Company; Indian College, 342; Eliot Bible and Library, 345; College Press, Censorship, Imitatio Christi, 348; Indian students, 352; decline and liquidation, 359.

340

ix

C O N T E N T S

P A R T XVIII.

FINANCIAL

HISTORY

or

II

CHAUNCY'S

ADMINISTRATION,

1654-1672

361

Accounting, first Hopkins donation; presidential salary grant, 363; appeals to Cromwell, Board of Trustees, Judge Hill's promise, Saltonstall's gift, 365; Mitchell's 'Modell,' 370; Piscataqua Benevolence, 373; subscription for new college, 376; gifts and legacies: Keayne, Webb, Glover, Penn, Rogers, Champney, Doddridge, 378; Pennoyer Farm and Fund, 383; College Stock, 388.

XIX.

LEONARD

HOAR, PRESIDENT, 1 6 7 2 - 1 6 7 5

390

Harvard's English friends; Leonard Hoar, 394; presidential election, 395; Charter of 1672, 398; plans and visions, 399; controversy and resignation, 401; Triennial Catalogues, 409. X X .

Ά

L o w

AND

LANGUISHING

STATE,' 1 6 7 5 - 1 6 8 4

.

.

.

415

Academia Instaurata; Urian Oakes, 418; King Philip's War, 422; Old Harvard Hall, 423; Commencement Oration of 1677, 430; President Oakes and the Holworthy Legacy, 436; Mather declines and Rogers accepts, 440. XXI.

THE

STUDENTS

AND

THEIR

LIFE, 1 6 7 3 - 1 7 0 7

.

.

.

.

446

The Dutchmen's visit; social statistics, 448; student life, freshmen, vacations, light reading, tutors, youthful piety, 452; 'Pride and Licentiousness,' 458; trip to Manhattan, 464; Commencement, 465; a Quaker's experience, 470.

XXII.

INCREASE

MATHER

AND

THE

DOMINION, 1 6 8 5 - 1 6 9 2

.

472

Election of Mather; Dudley, Cranfield, and Morton, 474; the College under Rector and Tutors, 476; Dominion of New England, 479; Mather in England, 483; Thorner, Hulton, and Boyle bequests, 485.

XXIII.

CHANGING

CHARTERS

AND M A T H E R I A N

MANOEUVRES,

1692-1701

489

Charter of 1692; University gestures: Divinity degrees and new seal, 490; witchcraft, 494; ^Increase Mather's policy and nostalgia for England, 498; Leverett and Brattle, 504; charter-mongering of 1696-97, 509; Charter of 1697, 513; Stoughton College, 518; Charter bill of 1699, 523; draft charter of 1700, 525; Mather tries Cambridge, J30.

XXIV.

WILLARD

то

LEVERETT, 1 7 0 1 - 1 7 0 7

Temporary settlement of 1700; Vice-President Willard, 538; the Liberal Congregational movement, 541; founding of Yale, 546; election of Leverett and restoration of Charter of 1650, 548; Sons of Harvard, 556.

537

χ

CONTENTS

APPENDICES:

A.

ON T H E D I F F I C U L T I E S OF 1653-1655 Order of General Court, September 10, 1653 Committee's Report to General Court, M a y 3, 1654 . Account of Town Subscriptions, 1653-1655 Order of General Court, May 3, 1654 Dunster's Petition, November 16, 1654 ' Briefe Information of the Present Necessityes,' M a y 9,

DOCUMENTS

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

569 570 573 575 575

l6

55 577 7. Action of the General Court on the 'Briefe Information ' 578 B . THESES

AND Q U A E S T I O N E S ,

1643-1708

Introduction Dates of Commencement, 1642-1708 Theses and Quaestiones, 1643-1708 C.

Two

LETTERS

OF L E O N A R D

580 582 583

HOAR

1. To his Freshman Nephew, Josiah Flynt, March 2 7 , 1 6 6 1 639 2. T o the Honorable Robert Boyle, December 13, 1672 . 644 D . DOCUMENTS

ON T H E B U I L D I N G OF O L D H A R V A R D

HALL

I. Return of the Committee on Subscriptions, April 24, 1678 647 2. William Manning's Building Accounts, M a y 29, 1682 . 650 E.

F.

C O N S T I T U T I O N A L D O C U M E N T S , I 692-1707 Charter of June 27, 1692 Charter of June 4, 1697 Temporary Settlement of 1700 Concurrent Resolve of December 6, 1707 INVENTORY

1800 INDEX

OF T H E H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y

654 656 659 660 ARCHIVES,

TO

662 683

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS P A R T

I

B I R D ' S E Y E V I E W OF H A R V A R D C O L L E G E A N D C A M B R I D G E , 1 6 6 8

Frontispiece

Drawn by H. R . Shurtleff, Esq., in 1935. THE

HARVARD COLLEGE

CHARTER

OF 1 6 5 0

8

From the original in the Harvard University Archives, much reduced. DETAIL

OF T H E C H A R T E R

9

T H E ' I N C H R I S T I G L O R I A M ' S E A L OF 1 6 5 0 , C O M P A R E D W I T H C R O M W E L LIAN COINAGE

12

T h e Die of the Seal, reversed (Harvard University Archives); Impression of the Seal on a Diploma of 1752 (Harvard University Archives); Half-crown of 1651, obverse and reverse, Massachusetts Historical Society. HARVARD COLLEGE

F A R M S IN THE P E Q U O T

COUNTRY

32-33

Drawn by Erwin Raisz, Ph.D., from data furnished by Charles M . Williams, M . D . , of Stonington. JOHN

NEWGATE'S

DEED

OF G I F T , 1 6 5 0

36

For a perpetual annuity on his farm at Rumney Marsh. Harvard University Archives. DEVELOPMENT

OF T H E

COLLEGE

YARD, 1650-1675

42

Drawn by Dr. Raisz. D E E D TO T H E B E T T S

L O T IN THE C O L L E G E

Y A R D , 1661

48

From the original in the Harvard University Archives. P A S S A G E S THROUGH THE S C R E E N S , S T . JOHN'S AND CHRJST'S

COLLEGES,

CAMBRIDGE

58

Showing Buttery Hatches and Tables. Photographed by S. Ε . M . in 1929. SIR

GEORGE

DOWNING

84

From the original portrait owned by Grenville Lindall Winthrop, Esq. THE

'GREAT

SALT'

94

Bequest of Richard Harris, Fellow-Commoner, in 1644. CREDITS

OF E D W A R D R A W S O N AND D E B I T S

OF G E R S H O M B U L K E L E Y

104

From Chesholme's Steward's Accounts, Harvard University Archives. PAGES

OF E L N A T H A N

CHAUNCY'S

COMMONPLACE

BOOK

116

These pages now face each other, the leaf between having disappeared. Owned by Mrs. William W . Fowler, of Durham, Connecticut. A

PAGE

FROM D A N I E L

Library of Congress.

RUSSELL'S

ALMANAC

FOR

1671

117

xii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

H A R V A R D STUDENTS'

BOOK-PLATES

OF T H E S E V E N T E E N T H

CENTURY .

152

John Leverett, 1677, from Sophocles' Tragosdiae, 1597, Prince Library, Boston Public Library; Edward Tompson, 1680, from R. Alleine, Vindiciae Pietatis, 1664, American Antiquarian Society; Nathaniel Mather, 1683, from his copy of the Polyglot Bible, Prince Library; Simon Willard, 1695, from Longomontanus, Astronomica, 1640, Harvard College Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF S T I E R I U S '

PRAECEPTA

ARTIUM

153

Cambridge, 1647; the engraved title-page, showing a university disputation, is attributed to William Marshall. Prince Library. BARTHOLOMÄUS

KECKERMANN

158

Cabinet des Estampes, Biblioth^que Nationale. TITLE-PAGE

OF K E C K E R M A N N ' S

LOGIC

159

The copy owned by Samuel Bellingham (A.B. 1642). Harvard College Library. DR.

WILLIAM AMES

162

From the portrait painted at Franeker about 1633, brought to New England by Mrs. Ames, and presented to Harvard College in 180J. See C. S. M., xxv. 81. HARVARD THESES

OF

1678

166

Massachusetts Historical Society. HARVARD QUAESTIONES

OF

1655

167

Harvard University Archives. T I T L E - P A G E S OF A P H T H O N I U S ' P R O G Y M N A S M A T A A N D B A R C L A Y ' S A R G E N I S

176

The latter with signatures of successive Harvard Wigglesworths on the flyleaf. Harvard College Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF A L D U S '

PHRASES

LINGUAE

LATINAE

177

With ship drawing by one of the early owners. Harvard College Library. PETRUS

RAMUS

188

Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliotheque Nationale. TITLE-PAGE

OF B U R G E R S D I C I U S '

INSTITUTIONES

LOGICAE

189

Cambridge, 1668. Harvard College Library. TITLE-PAGE

AND F L Y - L E A F

OF W O L F ' S

EDITION

OF I S O C R A T E S .

.

.

.

198

Geneva, 1651; owned by Jeremiah Shepard (A.B. 1669), Samuel Mitchell (A.B. 1681), and other Harvard students. Harvard College Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF C R E S P I N ' S

COLLECTION

OF G R E E K

POETRY

198

Harvard College Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF T H E

ILIAD

199

Cambridge, 1672; owned by eight Harvard students between 1680 and 1792. Harvard College Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF J U D G E

SEWALL'S

HEBREW

TESTAMENT

202

Amsterdam, 1635; see C. S. Μ., xxvin, 390. Harvard College Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF S C H I C K A R D ' S

HOROLOGIUM EBR^EUM

Utrecht, 1561. Copy that belonged to Presidents Hoar and Mather. Prince Library.

203

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS ILLUSTRATIONS IN R A M U S ' V I A

REGIA

xiii

AD GEOME;TRIAM

212

Bedwell translation, London, 1636; copy owned by three Harvard students between 1655 and 1660. Harvard College Library. COSMOGRAPHICAL SCHEMES IN M O R T O N ' S

COMPENDIUM PHYSICAE

.

.

213

Copy made by John Webb (A.B. 1708), Massachusetts Historical Society. GOVERNOR JOHN W I N T H R O P

OF C O N N E C T I C U T

218

From Miss Clara Bowdoin Winthrop's copy of the portrait painted in E n g . land, probably in 1635. TITLE-PAGE

OF G A S S E N D I ' S

INSTITUTIO ASTRONOMICA

219

London, 1653; copy owned by Thomas Shepard (A.B. 1676), William Brattle (A.B. 1680), and several students of the following century. Boston Athenaeum. TITLE-PAGE

AND F L Y - L E A F

OF M A G I R U S '

PHYSIOLOGIA

226

Geneva, 1621. Signatures of Daniel Russell (A.B. 1669), Isaac Foster (A.B. 1671), and Joseph Buckingham (A.B. Yale 1723). Boston Athenaeum. TITLE-PAGES

OF C A R P E N T E R ' S

PHILOSOPHIA

LIBERA

227

Oxford, 1622; with signatures of Thomas Brattle (A.B. 1676), Oliver Noyes (A.B. 1695), and Jonathan Remington (A.B. 1696). Prince Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF H E E R E B O O R D ' S

MELETEMATA

234

Amsterdam, 1680; copy that belonged to Benjamin Colman (A.B. 1692), Thomas Goodwin (A.B. 1725), Governor Spencer Phips (A.B. 1703), General Artemas Ward (A.B. 1748), and other students of the eighteenth century. Harvard College Library. A

R E C O R D OF T H E

FIRST H A R V A R D CHEMIST

235

Title-page to 'Pyrotechny Asserted,' by George Stirk or Starkey (A.B. 1646); and page 76, where he dates his chemical studies from college days. Harvard College Library. PAUL

DUDLEY, F. R . S

248

From the portrait by an unknown artist, possibly Jeremiah Dummer, owned by the Boston Athenaeum; it shows Dudley in his robes as Attorney-General, to which office he was appointed in 1702. A

PAGE

OF M O R T O N ' S

COMPENDIUM PHYSICAE, 1687

249

Describing the action of the winds, with a Compass Card. From the Webb copy. Massachusetts Historical Society. TITLE-PAGE

OF D E S C A R T E S '

MEDITATIONES

258

From his Opera Philosophica (Amsterdam, 1656), owned in College by Benjamin Lynde (A.B. 1686), President Wadsworth (A.B. 1690), and Timothy Lindali (A.B. 1695). Harvard College Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF G O L I U S ' E P I T O M E

OF A R I S T O T L E ' S

ETHICS

259

Copy owned in College by Henry Gibbs (A.B. 1685) and Thomas Prince (A.B. 1707). Prince Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF H E N R Y

MORE'S

ENCHIRIDION

ETHICUM

Copy owned by John Leverett as tutor, and by Adam Winthrop (A.B. 1694) and Thomas Prince in College. Prince Library.

259

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

XIV TITLE-PAGE

OF B A I L L I E ' S

OPUS

266

HISTORICUM

Copy owned by Recompense Wadsworth, who died in College in 1679, and by his brother, President Wadsworth. Prince Library. MAP

OF A M E R I C A I N H E Y L I N ' S

COSMOGRAPHIE, 1 6 5 7

266-67

Copy owned by the 'Apostle' Eliot, used in College by his grandson Jphn (A.B. 1685), who sold it in 1692 to President Wadsworth, then studying for his M.A. He sold it to his college mate Nathaniel Williams, later minister at Barbados. Harvard College Library. TITLE-PAGE

OF T H E

1 6 5 3 SEPTUAGINT

267

The first Septuagint printed in England; copy owned by Harvard College in 1676, used by John Leverett as tutor, sold by the Library in 1734, and presented to it again by Walter S. Hertzog (A.B. 1905). TITLE-PAGE

OF N A T H A N I E L

MATHER'S

POLYGLOT

BIBLE

280

Inscribed 'Nathanaelem Matherum Hoc Libro {sic) Donavit Pater Suus Carissimus Mensis Martis Die 23 Anno Christi M D C L X X X I I I . ' Prince Library. DIPLOMA

OF G E O R G E A L C O C K ( A . B . 1 6 7 3 )

281

The earliest known Harvard Degree Diploma. Archives. SIR JOHN

Harvard

University

MAYNARD

292

From the portrait by an unknown artist in the National Portrait Gallery, London. TITLE-PAGE

OF H A R V A R D C O L L E G E L I B R A R Y

CATALOGUE

OF 1 7 2 3

.

.

293

Copy owned by Robert Treat Paine (A.B. 1749), Signer of the Declaration of Independence. Harvard University Archives. T H E F I R S T R E C O G N I T I O N OF A H A R V A R D D E G R E E B Y A N E N G L I S H

UNI-

VERSITY

300

Record of James Ward's Harvard diploma, and of his incorporation into the University of Oxford and admission to the M.A. Oxford University Archives. THE

STOUGHTON DIPLOMA AND S A L T O N S T A L L SUPPLICAT

301

Record of William Stoughton's Harvard A.B. Diploma, and of Henry Saltonstall's supplicat to be admitted to the same degree in Oxford as his Padua M.D. Oxford University Archives. A

CHAUNCEIAN

COMMENCEMENT

330

Quaestiones of 1664; President Chauncy presides, Israel delivers the Salutatory Oration, Nathaniel and Elnathan respond to questions. Harvard University Archives. T I T L E - P A G E TO C H A U N C Y ' S

COMMENCEMENT

SERMON

331

Printed at Cambridge in 1655; copy owned by the Henry E . Huntington Library, San Marino, California. THE

INDIAN C O L L E G E

344

Conjectural Restoration by H. R . Shurtleff, Esq. CALEB

C H E E S H A H T E A U M U C K ' S L A T I N A D D R E S S TO T H E N E W

COMPANY

Boyle Mss., Royal Society of London.

ENGLAND 345

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

XV

PART II A N H U M B L E P R O P O S A L FOR T H E I N L A R O E M E N T OF U N I V E R S I T Y L E A R N I N G IN N E W

ENGLAND

368

Issued by the Trustees in 1659. Broadside in the Massachusetts Archives. PLAN

OF T H E R O G E R S

FARM, WALTHAM

Made by Benjamin Johnson in 1750; Harvard University Lands, II. DR.

380

Archives,

JOHN OWEN

392

From a portrait by John Riley in the National Portrait Gallery, London. GOVERNOR JOHN L E V E R E T T

410

From the contemporary miniature portrait owned by Mrs. Richard M . Saltonstall THE

FIRST

CATALOGUE

OF H A R V A R D G R A D U A T E S , 1 6 7 4

411

From the unique copy in the Public Record Office, London. OLD HARVARD H A L L

428

Detail from Burgis's 'Prospect of the Colledges,' 1726. Massachusetts Historical Society. FRONT

ELEVATION

OF O L D H A R V A R D H A L L

428-29

Drawn by H. R . Shurtleff, Esq. CONJECTURAL

FLOOR P L A N S

OF O L D H A R V A R D H A L L

429

Drawn by H. R . Shurtleff, Esq. SIR MATTHEW LADY

HOLWORTHY

SUSANNA

436

HOLWORTHY

437

From the portraits by Sir Peter Lely, in the Faculty Room, University Hall. JUDGE

SAMUEL

SEWALL

456

From the portrait by Smibert, 1730. Massachusetts Historical Society. THE

REVEREND

JOSEPH S E W A L L

457

From copy of a contemporary portrait owned by the Reverend Edgar L . Heermance, New Haven. T H E ORDER

OF S E N I O R I T Y

IN

1700

468

A page from Steward Bordman's Quarter-Bill book. Harvard University Archives. THE

STOUGHTON

CUP

469

Made by John Coney, and presented by Lieutenant-Governor Stoughton to the College in 1701. PRESIDENT

INCREASE

MATHER

478

From the portrait painted in London by Van der Spriett, 1688. Massachusetts Historical Society. GOVERNOR

SIR EDMUND ANDROS

From an engraving of the portrait lately owned by С. E . Andros, Esq., of Liverpool. Massachusetts Historical Society.

479

xvi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A N D

MAPS

B O S T O N , C H A R L E S T O W N , A N D C A M B R I D G E ON F R A N Q U E L I N ' S M A P OF 1 6 9 3

488

From Carte de la Ville, Baye, et Environs de Baston. Par Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin. Hydrog. du Roy, 1693. Verifiie par le Sieur de la Motte. Tracing in the Boston Public Library from the original in the D6p6t de Cartes de la Marine, Paris. SAMUEL MATHER'S

M.A.

DIPLOMA, 1701

492

Signed by President Mather, Vice-President Willard, and three Tutors, with an impression of the 1693 seal. Harvard Club of New Y o r k . THE

CHRISTO

ET ECCLESIAE

SEAL

OF

1 6 9 3 AND THE

181a

DIE

.

.

.

493

An impression of the Coney seal of 1693, on the M . A . Diploma of Peter Livius, 1767; new die sunk by Thomas Wightman, 1812 (reversed). Harvard University Archives. MAP

OF T H E

COLLEGE

Y A R D AND ADJOINING L A N D S IN

1700

.

.

.

508

Drawn by Erwin Raisz, P h . D . P L A N OF T H E L E V E R E T T

ESTATE

509

Endorsed by Leverett, 'Plan of my Mansion-House and the Lands Adjoining projected by Mr. John Gore [A.B. 1702] of Harvard College.' Ewer Mss., New England Historic Genealogical Society. LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR

W I L L I A M STOUGHTON

518

Stoughton College in the background. B y an unknown artist; presented to the University by John Cooper, a grandson of Stoughton's niece and executor. STOUGHTON

COLLEGE

519

Detail from Burgis's 'Prospect of the Colledges,' 1726. VICE-PRESIDENT

SAMUEL WILLARD

538

From the engraved frontispiece to his 'Compleat Body of Divinity,' 1736; copy owned by the Henry E . Huntington Library, San Marino, California. M R . TUTOR

PEMBERTON

539

From the engraved frontispiece to his 'Sermons and Discourses on Several Occasions,' London, 1727. Massachusetts Historical Society. GOVERNOR JOSEPH D U D L E Y

554

From a contemporary copy of the portrait painted in England c. 1693. Owned by Frederic Winthrop, Esq. LEGISLATIVE

RESOLVE

RESTORING

CHARTER

OF 1 6 5 0

555

From the engrossed and signed copy in the Harvard University Archives. OXFORD QUAESTIONES, 1618

580

Portion of a two-column broadside, issued for the Vespers Disputations before Commencement, 1618; Wood Mss., Bodleian Library. TRIPOS

VERSE,S AT THE U N I V E R S I T Y

OF C A M B R I D G E

581

Broadsheet of c. 1600; Seiden Mss., University Library, Cambridge.

The Map of Boston, Cambridge, and their environs in the Seventeenth Century, used for end-papers, is by Dr. Erwin Raisz.

LIST OF ARMS A N D SEALS FOR explanation of the principles involved in selecting these arms, see the beginning of the list in F. H. C., p. xv. No. ι was drawn by Pierre la Rose, Esq.; nos. 3 , 1 4 , 1 7 , 1 8 , 1 9 , 2 3 , 2 5 , and 28 by Robert Dickson Weston, Esq.; and the others, by Dr. Harold Bowditch, who owns the Gore Roll of Arms mentioned in the references. PART Ι.

ARMS

I

OF H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y

3

Gules three open books silver, edges covers and clasps gold, on the books the letters VE RI TAS sable. From the design adopted by the Corporation May 20, 1935. 2.

A R M S OF THOMAS

DANFORTH

22

In chief a human eye, in base a lozenge. Tinctures unknown. 5 Coll. Μ. H. S., 1.447; John Joseph May, Banforth Genealogy (1902). 3.

A R M S OF R O B E R T S E D G W I C K .

26

Gold on a cross gules five bells silver. Ν. Ε. H. G. R., xLii. 184-85; Waters, G. G. E., 1.261; Ms. Visitation of Bedfordshire, 1619, in British Museum; Gore Roll of Arms, no. 8, showing field silver. 4.

ARMS

OF THE C O L O N Y

OF B E R M U D A

39

The wreck of May's vessel, the Bonaventura, in 1593, alongside the North Rocks. Redrawn from the Colony seal engraved on the border of Norwood's Map of Bermuda, 1626. 5.

ARMS

OF P A T R I C K

COPLAND

40

Gold three molets gules. From the heraldic ceiling at Marischal College, Aberdeen; Proc. Soe. Antiq. Scotland, х х ш (1888-89). 177. 6.

ARMS

OF W I L L I A M A N D J O H N P A I N E

47

Silver a fess engrailed gules between three mardets sable, on the fess three voided lozenges gold; all within a border engrailed gules bezanty. Chapin, 'Colonial Heraldry,' R.I. Hist. Soc. Coll., х х и (1929). no. 3, pp. 92-93; ist Roll, no. 70; Ν. Ε. H. G. R., LXIX. 2$I, LXXIX. 83. 7.

S E A L OF THE P R E S I D E N T AND F E L L O W S , 1 6 5 0

50

See Illustration facing p. 12. 8.

A R M S ON THE H A R V A R D

CHARTER

OF

1650

74

See Illustration facing p. 9. 9.

S E A L OF H A R V A R D C O L L E G E , 1 6 4 3

After the impression in College Book III. See F. H. C., p. 329.

NO

xviii IO.

LIST OF ARMS AND SEALS

ARMS

OF V I C E - P R E S I D E N T

CHARLES

MORTON

2 3 6

Quarterly gules and ermine in the first and fourth a goat's head erased silver, the horns gold. Walter Wilson, Life of Daniel DeFoe, 1830 ed., 1.24 п.; Burke, General Armory (1884). Ii.

ARMS

OF J O H N A N D R A L P H F R E K E

2 8 5

Sable two bars and in chief three molets gold. Visitation of Dorsetshire 1623 {H. S., x x . 1885), pp. 40-41. ία.

ARMS

OF S I R J O H N

MAYNARD

2 9 1

Silver three sinister hands couped gules. Le Neve's Knights (H. S., vin. 1873), p. 117, quoting Visitation of Devon and Cornwall С ι . fol. 205. 13.

ARMS

OF T H E P R O T E C T O R A T E

2 9 8

Quartered: 1 & 4, Silver a cross gules (the Cross of Saint George, for England); 2, Azure a saltire silver (the Cross of Saint Andrew, for Scotland); 3, Azure a harp gold the strings silver (for Ireland). Over all an escutcheon: Sable a lion silver (for Cromwell). Woodward and Burnett, Heraldry British and Foreign (1892), ii. 487. 14.

ARMS

OF P R E S I D E N T

CHAUNCY

3 2 0

See F. H. C., p. xxi, no. 59. 15.

SEAL

OF T H E N E W

ENGLAND

COMPANY

3 4 0

From cut and impression of the Company Seal furnished by the Charter Clerk of the Company, Major F. R. Bush.

PART II 16.

ARMS

OF G O V E R N O R

EDWARD HOPKINS

3 6 1

A stag passant within a border engrailed, a chief dancetty. The tinctures are unknown. Seal used by the Governor, presumably his father's, showing these arms impaling Lello, his mother's family. Reproduced in 4 Coll. M. H. S., v t plate iii; the original is in the Winthrop Mss., Yale University Library. H . J ; III. 1 7 5 . 17.

ARMS

OF N A T H A N I E L

BACON

3 6 7

Gules on a chief silver two molets pierced sable. Brooke, General Armory (1842). 18.

ARMS

OF R O G E R

HILL

3 6 9

Gules a chevron between three garbs gold and a border silver. Hill of Pownsford and Taunton, со. Somerset, ibid. 19.

ARMS

OF R O B E R T

KEAYNE

Azure an eagle silver. Prestwich's Respublica (London, 1787), pp. 105-06; Committee on Heraldry of N. E. H. G. S., 3d Roll of Arms (not yet published).

3 7 8

LIST OF ARMS AND SEALS 20.

A R M S OF J O H N D O D D R I D G E

xix 382

Silver two pales w a v y azure between nine crosslets gules. Doderidge in Burke, General Armory (1884); arms on silver tankard presented by Doddridge to M a y o r and Corporation of Bristol. 21.

A R M S OF C H R I S T ' S H O S P I T A L

383

T h e arms of the C i t y of London (silver a cross of Saint George and in the cantel the sword of St. Paul erect gules) and a chief azure, on the chief a rose silver between two fleurs-de-lys gold. Fox-Davies, Book of Public Arms (1915), p. 182. 22.

A R M S OF P R E S I D E N T H O A R

390

Silver a two-headed eagle in a border engrailed sable. Ν. Ε. H. G. R., XLV. 2 8 7 - 8 8 . 23.

A R M S OF S I R M A T T H E W H O L W O R T H Y

415

Gold a chevron between three trefoils slipped sable, on the chevron three molets gold. Burke, General Armory (1842). 24.

A R M S OF S I R T H O M A S T E M P L E

423

Silver two bars sable on each three martlets gold. Whitmore, Elements of Heraldry (1866), p. 65, seal used by Sir Thomas Temple; Kimber and Johnson, Baronetage (1771); Foster, Baronetage (1881); Burke, Peerage and Baronetage (1930). 25.

A R M S OF H E N R Y A S H U R S T

439

Gules a cross engrailed gold between four fleur-de-lys silver. Burke, General Armory (1842). 26.

A R M S OF H A R V A R D C O L L E G E , 1 6 9 3

446

From the Coney Seal of that year. See illustration in this volume. 27.

A R M S OF G O V E R N O R S I R E D M U N D A N D R O S

472

Quartered: ι & 4, silver a chevron gules between three leopards' faces sable, on the chevron three towers triple towered gold (Seigneury of de Sausmarez, arms granted 23 September 1686); 2 & 3, gules a saltire gold surmounted of another vert, on a chief silver three molets sable (Andros). H. J., I. 141-42; Notes Queries, 3d Series, ν (1864). 425. 28.

A R M S OF G O V E R N O R J O S E P H D U D L E Y

474

Gold a lion vert (or azure). Joseph Dudley omitted the crescent for difference as used by his father, Governor Thomas Dudley (F. H . C., no. 41), and used a two-tailed lion. 29.

A R M S OF THE H O N O R A B L E R O B E R T

BOYLE

486

Per bend battled silver and gules, a rose for the difference of the seventh son. Burke, General Armory (1884), Peerage (1930). 30.

A R M S OF S I R W I L L I A M P H I P S

Sable a trefoil slipped ermine in an orle of molets silver. Seal of Governor Phips, H. J.,i (1865). 1 £2; Gore Roll of Arms, no. 21, dated 1710.

494

LIST OF ARMS AND SEALS

XX 31.

ARMS

OF T H O M A S A N D W I L L I A M

BRATTLE

504

Gules a chevron engrailed gold between three battle-axes erect silver. Gore Roll 0/ Arms, nos. 9 (1707) and 30 (1713). 32.

ARMS

OF R I C H A R D

COOTE,, E A R L

OF B E L L O M O N T

515

Silver a chevron sable between three coots proper. H. J., 1.166, HI. 24-26; Burke, General Armory (1884); 2d Roll of Arms, no. 161. 33.

ARMS

OF P R E S I D E N T J O H N L E V E R E T T

537

Silver a chevron between three running leverets sable. Gore Roll of Arms, nos. 8 (1682) and 35 (1715); H. J., 1. 83-84; seal used by Governor Leverett. 34.

ARMS

OF Y A L E

COLLEGE

546

On an open book the words D'Dfll D'TIN· From the seal on a degree diploma of 1740, in the Yale University Library. Around 1850 the modern form was adopted of printing the two Hebrew words (Urim and Thummim) across the book, instead of having Urim on the sinister page and Thummim on the dexter, as shown here. The modern form, with azure field, silver book, and azure Hebrew letter, ing, together with the words L U X E T above and V E R I T A S below the book, all silver, was adopted on September 21, 1914, as the arms of Yale University. Information from Professor Frank C. Porter and the Secretary of Yale. 35.

S E A L OF T H E P R O V I N C E OF M A S S A C H U S E T T S B A Y ( A R M S , C R E S T , A N D GARTER

ONLY)

The arms of William and Mary, surrounded by inscription in two borders: — (1) GVLIELMVS · I I I · E T · MARIA · II · D · G · Μ • B R · F R · E T · HI · R E X · E T · R E G (a) SIG : R E G : PROVINCI/E · D E · MASSACHVSETS B A Y • IN · NOVA · ANGLIA · IN · AMERICA. From the Harvard Charter of 1697.

654

ABBREVIATIONS IN FOOTNOTES A. A. S

American Antiquarian Society, Worcester. Proc. A. A. S. are the Proceedings of this Society, 1812-.

B. P. L

Boston Public Library.

C. S. Μ

Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1895-. Vols, xv, xvi, x x x i contain Harvard College Records.

Coll.

See Μ. H. S.

D. Α. В

Dictionary of American Biography, New York, 1928-.

D. Ν. В

Dictionary of National Biography, London.

H. C. L

Harvard College Library.

F. H. С

S. E. Morison, The Founding of Harvard College (1935, the previous volume in this series).

H. U. Arch

Harvard University Archives.

Magnalia

Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, 1702.

Mass. Archives .. Massachusetts Archives, State House, Boston. Mass. Bay Rees... Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 5 vols, in 6, 1853-54. M. H. S Massachusetts Historical Society. Coll. M. H. S. are the printed Collections of this Society, 1792-. Proc. M. H. S. are the Proceedings, 1859-. Numerical prefixes indicate numbers of series. N. E. D The New English Dictionary, Oxford, 1888-1928. N. E. H. G. R

New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Boston, 1847-..

N. E. Q.

The New England Quarterly, 1928-.

Paige

Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge (Boston, 1877), with Supplement and Index (1930).

Proc Quincy

see A. A. S.; M. H. S. Josiah Quincy, History of Harvard University, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1840.

Sibley

J . L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, 4 vols., Cambridge, 1873-1932.

HARVARD C O L L E G E IN T H E SEVENTEENTH CENTURY PART I

T H U S OUT O F SMALLE B E G I N I N G S G R E A T E R THINGS HAVE B E E N PRODUSED BY HIS H A N D THAT MADE ALL THINGS OF N O T H I N G , A N D G I V E S B E I N G TO ALL T H I N G S THAT A R E ; AND AS O N E SMALL CANDLE MAY LIGHT A T H O U S A N D , SO T H E LIGHT H E R E K I N D L E D HATH SHONE TO MANY, YEA I N SOME SORTE TO OUR W H O L E N A T I O N ; LET T H E GLORIOUS NAME OF J E H O V A HAVE ALL T H E P R A I S E . WILLIAM

BRADFORD,

History of Plimmoth

Plantation.

I T H E CHARTER OF 1650 Harvard College in 1650 was a sturdy adolescent, attempting to advance the cause of humane and divine learning among a scanty population who were engaged in a severe struggle for existence. Under the energetic presidency of Henry Dunster, the College had weathered the depression of the 1640's, completed a building of ambitious dimensions, established a curriculum in the Liberal Arts, the Learned Tongues, and the Three Philosophies, and granted degrees to a group of promising young men. Financial support was still far from adequate for the kind of institution that Dunster wished to maintain, and the sort of things he yearned to do; yet Harvard College was in a fairly flourishing condition, with some forty undergraduates in residence, and about ten graduate students studying for the M.A.1 Thirty years later, this Dunster era was regarded as a sort of golden age. Then, wrote Increase Mather, 'there was a Spirit to encourage Learning, and the College was full of Students.' 2 Corporate autonomy, such as all the English colleges enjoyed, 3 was needed to place the College on a firm foundation. The Board of Overseers, the ex officio board of magistrates and ministers organized by the Act of 1642, was a cumbrous body for the ordinary needs of college business, difficult to assemble from the different parts of the Bay Colony; 4 and only one member of it, the President of the College, had any close contact with college affairs. Moreover, the President and Tutors 1. These numbers are obtained from Chesholme's accounts (C. S. M . , x x x i ) . 2. Cotton Mather, Magnalia (1702 ed.), book v. 94. Cf. Chapter X X I , below. 3. See my Founding of Harvard College (1935), especially Chapter V. 4. F. H. C., Chapter X X I I . The ministerial members lived no further away than Boston and Dorchester; but one of the magisterial members, William Pynchon, lived in Springfield, and several others at Ipswich and Newbury.

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D

UNIVERSITY

had no security. They were merely employes of an official board, in the unfortunate position of having responsibility without power. Any and every act of their government and discipline was liable to be overruled by the Overseers. The contrast between their situation and that of English college fellows, who enjoyed almost sovereign powers within their college precincts, was humiliating. Either on March 28 or on May 6, 1650, when we know that the Board of Overseers met at the College,1 President Dunster must have won them over to seeking a corporate charter. The only authority from which incorporation could be obtained under existing circumstances was the General Court of the Colony. For King Charles was dead, and the rulers of Massachusetts Bay were determined never to admit that the smallest part of the royal sovereignty over their Colony had devolved on the Long Parliament. Accordingly the General Court, shortly after it met at Boston on May 23, 1650, received a ' peticion of Henry Dunster, president of Haruard Colledge, in Cambridge, with relation to his desire in fiue particulers.' This petition is known to us only through the Court's action thereon.' The most important 'particuler' 2 was placed first: ι proposition, for the graunt of a corporation for the well ordring and managinge the affayres belonginge to the colledge, Answer, the Court is ready to graunt a corporation to the colledge, so as meete persons be presented to the Courte, with a draught of theire power and libertie, neither magistrats who are to be judges in poynt of diffrence that shall or may fall out, nor ministers who are vn willing to accept thereof.3

In other words, the Court was willing to incorporate the College as soon as a draft was agreed upon, and a satisfactory list of incorporators presented. These must not include magistrates, who were already ex officio members of the Board of Overseers, and, in their political capacities, judges of any dispute that might arise between the Overseers and the proposed ι . C. S. Μ . , X V . 32, 27. 2. T h e other four were: laying out of Israel Stoughton's land; regulating the Charlestown ferry rent (see F. H. C., Chapter X X I ) ; 'enlargment of buildinge,' which the Court declared itself 'in no capacitie at presente to encourage'; and exemption from customs duties on gifts to the College from New Haven, Connecticut, or Plymouth, which was granted.

3. Mass. Bay Rees., in. 207-08.

CHARTER OF 1650

5

Corporation. And if any ministers were proposed, their consent must be obtained. The most remarkable thing about this answer is the Court's serene assumption that it possessed the sovereign power to create a corporation. Whether in a strictly legal sense it had this right may well be doubted; but the exercise thereof in respect to Harvard College seems never to have been challenged by the law officers of the Crown. 1 Probably the President had a draft ready; if not, one was promptly produced, which without further formalities passed on M a y 30, 1650. 2 The actual engrossed Charter, signed by Governor Dudley, is dated M a y 3 1 , 1650. The text of it is here printed as accurately as it can be rendered in type.3 ЯВДегеай tijroußb tfte good hand of G o d m a n y well deuoted persons haue beene and d a y l y are mooued and stirred v p to giue and bestowe sundry guiftes legacies lands and Revennewes for the aduancement of all good literature artes and Sciences in Haruard Colledge in C a m bridge in the County of Middlesex and to the mainte1. For the constitutional question, see C. S. Μ., i. 185, 198-99, 205, 214-15, and Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (1934), pp. 42-43 nn. Professor Andrews declares that both Massachusetts and Connecticut 'violated the terms of their charters' in chartering Harvard and Yale. Dean Roscoe Pound, on the contrary, is of the opinion that colonizing corporations were within their rights in exercising quasi-sovereign powers that would have been clearly illegal if exercised by corporations in England. It was assumed by Joseph Dudley and Sir Edmund Andros in 1684-85 that the College Charter was vacated with the Colony Charter; but Dudley took the opposite view in 1707, and the resumption of the College Charter at that date, arranged by him, was never challenged by the Crown. In the lengthy discussions over a new college charter between 1692 and 1701, the law officers of the Crown never denied the right of the General Court to incorporate the College. See Chapter X X I I I . 2. So states Treasurer Danforth in his copy of the Charter in College Book III (C. S. Μ., XV. 181-83). The Charter is entered in the Massachusetts Bay Records (in. 195-96) under the date May 23, which cannot be correct, as that was the first day of the session; nor can the date of the entry in these records of President Dunster's petition and the answers thereto (June 21) be correct, since the Charter is dated May 31. Such irregularities are not uncommon in the Bay Colony records. 3. A full-sized facsimile of the Charter has been reproduced by the collotype process by the Harvard University Press. The Charter was promptly copied into College Book I, and certified as Verum Exemplar by Secretary Edward Rawson (C. S. M., xv. 4042). This copy and Danforth's (id. 181-83), are inaccurate in spelling and small details. The charter is accurately printed in C. S. M., xxxi, and in the Harvard University Catalogue for 1933-34 and later years. In earlier catalogues, the spelling was modernized. There is a ms. copy in the Public Record Office, calendared in Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574-1660, p. 340; a photostat of this copy is in the H. U. Archives.

6

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

nance of the Praesident and Fellowes and for all accommodacons of Buildings and all other necessary prouisions that may conduce to the education of the English & Indian Youth of this Country in knowledge: and godlines. St 1Й therefore ordered and enacted by this Court and the aucthority thereof That for the furthering of so good a worke and for the purposes aforesaid from henceforth that the said Colledge in Cambridge in Middlesex in New England shalbe a Corporation Consisting of seauen persons (to wit) a President Fiue Fellowes and a Treasurer or Burser and that Henry Dunster shall be the first President Samuell Mather Samuell Danford maisters of Arte Jonathan Michell Comfort Starre and Samuell Eaton Batchelers of Arte shall be the fiue Fellowes and Thomas Danford to be present Treasurer, all of them being Inhabitants in the Bay, and shall be the first seuen persons of which the said Corporation shall consist And that the said seuen persons or the greater Number of them procuring the presence of the Ouerseers of of {sic] the Colledge and by their counsell and consent shall haue power and are heereby authorised at any tyme or tymes to elect a new President Fellowes or Treasurer so oft and from tyme to tyme as any of the said person or persons shall dye or be remoued, which said President and Fellowes for the tyme being shall for euer heereafter in name and fact be one body politique and Corporate in Lawe to all intents and purposes, and shall haue perpetuall succession And shall be called by the name of President and Fellowes of Haruard Colledge And shall from tyme to tyme be eligible as afforesaid And by that name they and their Successors shall and may purchase and acquire to themselues or take and receaue vppon Free guift and donation any Lands Tenements or Hereditaments within this Jurisdiccion of the Massatusetts not exceeding the value of Fiue hundred pounds per annum and any goods and sommes of money whatsoeuer to the vse and behoofe of the said President Fellowes and Schollers of the said Colledge and also may sue and plead or be sued and impleaded by the name aforesaid in all Courtes and

CHARTER OF 1650

7 places of Iudicature within the Iurisdiccion aforesaid and that the said President with any three of the Fellowes shall haue power and are heereby Aucthorized when they shall thinck fitt to make and appoint a Common Seale for the vse of the said Corporation. And the President & Fellowes or the maior part of them from tyme to tyme may meete and choose such Officers & Servants 1 for the Colledge and make such allowance to them and them also to remoue and after death or remoueall to choose such others and to make from tyme to tyme such orders & Bylawes for the better ordering & carying on the worke of the Colledge as they shall thinck fitt. Prouided the said orders be allowed by the Ouerseers. And also that the President and Fellowes or maior parte of them with the Treasurer shall haue power to make conclusiue bargaines for Landes & Tenements to be purchased by the said Corporation for valuable consideracion. gfab for the better ordering of the Gouerment of the said Colledge and Corporation Be it Enacted by the Aucthoritie aforesaid That the President and three more of the Fellowes shall and may from tyme to tyme vppon due warninge or notice giuen by the President to the rest holde a meeting for the debating and concluding of affaires concerning the proffitts and Reuennues of any Landes and disposing of their Goods. Prouided that all the said disposings be according to the will of the donors. And for direction in all emergent occasions execution of all orders and Bylawes and for the procuring of a Generali meeting of all the Ouerseers & societie in great & difficult cases, and in cases of nonagreement, In all which cases aforesaid the conclusion shall be made by the maior parte ye said President hauing a casting voice2 the Overseers consenting therevnto. And that all the aforesaid transaccions shall tend to & for the vse and behoofe of the President Fellowes Schollers & Officers of the said Colledge, and for all accommodacions of buildings bookes and all other nec1. The V is interlined in different ink. 2. This and the six previous words are on a slip pasted over the parchment, probably to cover up a mistake in the engrossing.

8

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y

essary prouisions & furnitures as may be for the aduancement & education of youth in all manner of good literature Artes and Sciences. &ttb further be it ordered by this Court and the Aucthority thereof That all the Landes Tenements or Hereditaments howses or Revennues within this Iurisdiccion to the aforesaid President or Colledge appertayning, not exceeding the value of fiue hundred pounds per annum shall from henceforth be freed from all ciuill impositions taxes & rates all goods to the said corporation or to any Schollers thereof appertayning shall be exempt from all manner of tolle Customes & excise whatsoeuer. And that the said President Fellowes & Schollers together with the servants & other necessarie Officers to the said President or Colledge appertayning not exceeding tenne, viz three to the President and seuen to the Colledge belonging shall be exempted from all personall ciuill offices militarie exercises or seruices watchings and wardings and such of their estates not exceeding one hundred poundes a man shall be free from all Country taxes or rates whatsoeuer and none others. Six fflitncg whereof The Court hath caused the Seale of the Colonie to be heerevnto affixed. Dated the One & thirtieth day of the Third moneth called M a y . Anno 1650. Т н о : DUDLEY

Gov r [on left side] H A R V A R D C O L L E D G E [on right side] H E N R Y D U N S T E R

PRESIDENT

[on back, in contemporary hand] Haru[ar]d Coll[ege] Charter

M?D.

This Charter of 1650, issued to a college of about sixty members, still serves as the constitution and frame of government of a university with some fourteen hundred officers and nine thousand students. The Corporation created in 1650 was given 'perpetual succession'; and excepting for two periods of

CHARTER OF 1650

9

abeyance, 1

it has been continually in existence from that day to this. The President and Fellows of Harvard College are easily the oldest corporation in North America operating under their original grant. 3 The engrossed Charter, one of the most precious possessions of the University, is an interesting effort to do the proper thing in diplomatics, and to express the creative instincts of an unknown local artist. I t bears a surface resemblance to the Great Charter of Charles I to the University of Oxford, to the Charter of James I*to Wadham College, and to certain letters patent of Richard Lord Protector, preserved in the Bodleian Library. But it was engrossed by a colonial, not an English, calligrapher. The workmanship, though good, is not up to chancery standards; and the script is not in the chancery hand. Mr. Hilary Jenkinson, of the Public Record Office, writes, I should call it a reminiscence of the form of Royal Letters Patent with numerous fancy additions; and should expect it to be the production of a local scribe with an example of real Letters Patent 3 before him or in his mind, and perhaps a writing master's book on his table containing a copy in Chancery Hand. . . . The seal tag is extremely abnormal in my experience and in that of my colleagues and of the British Museum people. And, although the language of the Charter calls for a seal, the seal tag shows no evidence of ever having borne one. In the opinion of Mr. Graily Hewitt, an expert on seventeenthcentury chirography, the entire Charter, including text, pen flourishes, college arms, young man shooting at a squirrel, and his expectant dog, was the product of a single hand. The Harvard Charter, then, is unique as a document, and as a colonial artistic creation. In deciding on the language for the Charter, Dunster must have had the aid of someone who knew the still inchoate corpo1. The first from July 2 3 , 1 6 8 6 , to some period between June 7 , 1 6 8 9 and June 2, 1690; the second from June 27, 1692 to December 6, 1707. Albert Matthews, in C. S. M., xv. pp. xxxviii, xl, lx. For the Charter of 1672, see Chapter X I X . 2. Joseph S. Davis, Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations (Harvard Economic Studies, xvi), 1. 18, 21, 84, 105. 3. The obvious example was the Massachusetts Bay Charter, which bears the form of Letters Patent under the Great Seal, and which was available to the engrosser of the College Charter. Reproduced in Proc. Μ. H. S., LXII, and The Founding of Massachusetts (1930).

10

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

rate forms and laws of England. That person, in all probability, was Richard Bellingham, magistrate of the Bay and Overseer of the College, the only trained lawyer then in a position of authority in Massachusetts, and chairman of a committee that drafted the colonial Laws and Liberties of 1648.1 In language the Harvard Charter is somewhat similar to the royal charters of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, although it lacks the redundancy of those drafted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Whole clauses and phrases might have been translated from the charters of Emm^huel or Sidney Sussex.2 But the Harvard Charter determines several subjects, such as the distribution of powers between governing bodies, which in English colleges were settled by founders' statutes. It further differs from English college charters in two important particulars. In England the Scholars were generally incorporated with the Master, Fellows, and sometimes other designated officers, although the Scholars were never given any share in the government; at Harvard, only the President, Treasurer, and five Fellows are members of the Corporation. But the 'Schollers' are thrice mentioned, and the 'officers' once, with the President and Fellows, as an integral part of the institution. In England, the only legal check on acts of college corporations (other than university statutes where the two overlapped) was that of the Visitor. His function was merely that of an umpire in disputes; and many English colleges had no Visitor in 1600.3 But in the Harvard Charter the Board of Overseers, as established by the Act of 1642 (all the Assistants of the Bay Colony, and the ministers of Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Watertown, Roxbury, and Dorchester), is confirmed and recognized not as a mere board of visitation, but as a second governing body. Initiative lies with the Corporation; but consent of the Overseers is required for college statutes, 1. S. E . Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony, pp. 263, 265. 2. I t is not likely that copies of these documents existed in New England; the phrases in question were common to all corporate grants, and would have been known by heart by a man like Bellingham, who had been recorder of the chartered borough of Boston in Lincolnshire. 3. Trinity College, Dublin, had a Board of Visitors representing the Church, the Viceregal Government, the Magistracy, and the City; and this Board had power not only to 'determine and conclude all disputes' within the College Corporation, but to "punish all the weightier delinquencies not corrected by the Provost and Fellows' (D. C. Heron, Const. Hist. Univ. Dublin, p. 20). T h i s was far short of the powers of the Harvard Board. Visitors seem to have been an Oxford rather than a Cambridge institution (J. B. Mullinger, The Univ. oj Cambridge, i n . 484-88).

CHARTER OF 1650

II

appointments, and fellowship elections. It was, of course, natural that the Commonwealth which had founded Harvard College, and the Churches which the College supplied, should wish to keep a certain control over a young institution, run by young men. In 1650, President Dunster had just turned forty, and the average age of his five fellows was about twentyfour; even Treasurer Danforth was but twenty-six. The Charter authorizes the President and Fellows 'when they shall thinck fitt to make and appoint a Common Seale for the vse of the said Corporation.' As a guide for the design the engrosser of the Charter drew three closed and clasped books with a chevron, on a pear-shaped shield; but the designers of the corporate seal of 1650 followed much more closely the Overseers' seal of 1643.1 The die for the 1650 seal was probably made in England, for we have no knowledge of any colonist capable of cutting it, and the lettering and figures closely resemble those on the coinage of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. 2 The three books are blank, furnished with strings, rather than clasps as in the original design of 1643; they are separated by a chevron; in the field between the shield and the border is inscribed the motto In Christi Gloriam, and on the border, SIGILL : COL : HARVARD : CANTAB : NOV : ANGL : 1650: Charter provisions as to the delimitation of powers between Corporation and Overseers are by no means clear. Accordingly, on the application of the Board of Overseers the General Court of Massachusetts Bay passed an 'Appendix' to the Charter of 1650, on October 23, 1657, in the following words: In answer to certaine proposalls presented to this Court by the ouerseers of H a r v a r d Colledge, as an appendix to 1. F. H. C., p. 325. Cf. S. E . Morison, 'Harvard Seals and Arms,' Harvard Graduates' Magazine, XLII (September, 1933). 1 - 1 5 · 2. T h i s is the conclusion of the late Dr. Malcolm Storer (A.B. 1885), an experienced numismatist. He placed the die of the 1650 seal side by side with an English half-crown of 1651, as in our illustration, and found the lettering and the arabic numerals almost identical in style. I t is true that I have found no impression of this or of any Harvard seal between 1650 and 1701; yet it is found on several degree diplomas between the years 1752 and 1779. It seems probable that after the Charter of 1650 was revived in 1707 the Corporation returned to the use of the 1650 seal, which had been replaced by the Christo et Eeclesiae seal in 1693 (see Chapter X X I I ) . B u t the latter seal is also found on diplomas and other documents between 1738 and 1779.

12

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

the colledge charter, it is ordered, the corporation shall haue power from tjme to t j m e to make such orders and b y lawes for the better ordering and carrying on of the worke of the colledge, as they shall see cawse, without dependance vpon the consent of the ouerseers foregoing; provided, alwajes, that the corporation shall be responsable v n t o , and those orders and b y lawes shallbe alterable b y , the ouerseers according to theire discretion. A n d when the corporation shall hold a meeting, and agreeing with colledge servants, for making of orders and b y lawes, for debating and concluding of affaires concerning the proffitts and revenues of any lands or guiftes, and the disposing thereof, (provided that all the sajd disposalls be according to the will of the donors,) for mannaging of all emergent occasions for the procuring of a generali meeting of the ouerseers & society in great and difficult cases, and in cases of non agreement, & for all other colledge affaires to them pertajning, in all these cases the conclusion shall be v a l j d , being made b y the major part of the corporacion, the president having a casting v o t e ; provided alwajes, that in these things also they be responsable to the ouerseers as aforesajd. A n d in case the corporacion shall see cawse to call a meeting of the ouerseers, or the ouerseers shall thinke goode to meete of themselves, it shall be s u f f i c i e n t vnto the validditje of colledge acts that notice be given to the ouerseers in the sixe tounes mencioned in the printed lawe, anno 1642, when the rest of the ouerseers, b y reason of the remotenes of theire habbitacions, cannot conveniently be acquainted therewith. 1 Although this explanatory charter, as it might be called, was not so precise as to preclude all controversy, the intent is plain. The Corporation was expected to be the governing body of the College; but none of its acts, except emergency measures, were to be valid except by the consent of the Overseers; and I. Mass. Bay Rees., rv. part i. 315. It does not appear that a copy of this 'Append i x ' was ever engrossed and presented to the College, like the original charter. N o copy of it is found in the University Archives; but it is printed after the Charter of 1650 at the beginning of every modern issue of the Harvard University Catalogue.

Above:

DIE

OF T H E

Below:

SEAL

OF

1650

HALF-CROWN

OF

(REVERSED), 1651,

AND IMPRESSION

OBVERSE

AND

REVERSE

ON

DIPLOMA

CHARTER

OF

1650

13

even emergency measures might later be invalidated by them. On the other hand, the Overseers were not supposed to initiate anything; their function was to safeguard the interests of Commonwealth and churches, and to prevent the President and Fellows from doing anything unwise. Nevertheless, the Overseers took a good deal more on themselves; throughout the seventeenth century they were the more powerful governing body of the two. It was the Overseers who, despite the Charter, elected Presidents Chauncy and Hoar. It was to the Overseers, not the Corporation, that the teaching fellows looked for their stipends, and from whom the Treasurer took his orders for payments.1 It was the Overseers who promulgated orders for the guidance and conduct of college servants. After the Charter was revived in 1707, the Corporation began to recover some of the rights which their youthful predecessors had never dared to assert. FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

On two occasions a century apart, in 1720-23 and again in 1825, there arose a violent controversy as to the meaning of 'fellow' in the Charter of 1650. Must every fellow be a tutor, and every tutor a fellow; or could the Corporation co-opt whomsoever it pleased, and leave any or every tutor outside its fellowship? Both controversies, bearing as they did on the rights and duties of the combatants, afford more heat than light to the question.8 Approaching it historically, there are but three elements to consider: the practice in English colleges familiar to our founders; the words of the Charter of 1650; and the practice at Harvard in the seventeenth century. 1. See formula for admitting fellows, p. 1 9 , below. A t an Overseers' meeting of June 7, 1 6 5 4 ' T h e Presidents and Fellows Salaries were Settled for that Y e a r . ' On November 2, 1 6 5 4 ' T h e Overseers tendered M r Chauncey . . . the Presidents place, with A Stipend of 100 per A n n u m . ' On J u l y 1 6 , 1 6 6 0 the Overseers order the Treasurer of Harvard College to make certain payments to the Fellows. On March 27, 1667 the Overseers order the Treasurer to pay the President something additional. On June 3 , 1669 the Overseers increase the salaries of the three fellows by £ 1 5 , £ 1 1 , and £ 7 respectively; on March 7 , 1 6 7 1 / 7 2 the Overseers promise the Fellows Ά meet Addition to their Allowances.' Extracts from Overseers records in College Book I I (destroyed in 1764) by Nicholas Sever, in H . U . Archives, Harvard College Papers, 1. 136. 2. M r . Albert Matthews has kindly furnished me, just before this volume goes to press, with copies of documents that he has collected on the controversy of 1 7 2 0 - 2 3 , with which I shall deal in the next volume. I t is clear that Quincy's account of that controversy is both inaccurate and biased.

14

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Briefly, my conclusion is this. If the language of the Charter be compared with English collegiate institutions, which our founders regarded as their models, it is perfectly clear that Dunster intended to establish a governing body differing only from that of a Cambridge college because he had to reckon with the Overseers. But if we study what happened at Harvard College after May 31, 1650, it is equally clear that the Harvard Corporation never functioned like an English collegiate body, and began to evolve into something else before the ink was scarce dry on the Charter. The five Fellows of Harvard College were expected to have the powers, privileges, and duties of English college fellows. The intent was that every teacher of undergraduates (so long as there were no more than five) should be a fellow, and that every fellow should be engaged either in study or teaching, or both. All five were expected to reside in college. No Oxford or Cambridge college, in the era of Harvard's foundation, had conceived of a college teacher who was not a college fellow,1 although in the larger colleges there was no obligation on a fellow to teach; he might reside in the college and do as he liked, so long as he observed the statutes for members of his standing. Even before the Charter was granted, President Dunster was following the English system so far as he could. In the college records and elsewhere, the young men who served as tutors between 1643 and 1650 are frequently styled fellows; 2 and of the five named Fellows in the Charter, four seem to have been serving as tutors when the Charter was issued, and the fifth entered upon his teaching duties shortly after, when one of the others obtained a parish.3 Dunster hoped to establish a self-perpetuating corporation of President, Treasurer, and five teaching or research fellows, ι . An exception should be made of Christ Church, Oxford, where the teachers, still known as 'Senior Students,' were until the last century mere tutors hired by the Dean and Canons, with no powers of government. 1. T h e instances are collected by Mr. Albert Matthews in his introduction to the Harvard College Records, C. S. Μ., χ v. p. cxxxii ff. 3. In the fellowship controversy of 1720-23, Nicholas Sever (A.B. 1701) and President Leverett agreed that only two of the fellows named in the Charter of 1650 were tutors at the time; but they disagreed as to which two. Cf. Sever's note in Chauncy's copy of the Laws of 1655, printed in C. S. M., x x x i . 339, with Leverett's letter of August 28,1721 in Ewer Mss. (N.E.H.G.S.), 1. 59. Sever and Leverett probably did not consult Chesholme's Steward's Accounts, data from which will be found in the brief sketches of the five charter fellows, below.

15

C H A R T E R O F 1650 1

who would hold their positions during good behavior; but this worthy ambition was thwarted by lack of funds. The ' Colledge Corne' yielded such meagre stipends, barely enough to pay a fellow's board and study rent,2 that it was not worth anyone's while to be a teaching fellow of Harvard College unless he were at the same time studying for the M.A., or waiting for a pulpit to fall vacant. The young graduates appointed to fellowships felt no obligation to remain, or even to do systematic teaching when in residence; 'being so unsetled,' complained Dunster, 'and so often changed, that ever and anon all the work committed unto them falleth agen on my shoulders.'3 Including those named in the Charter, there had been eight fellowship appointments by December 1653; but not more than two were teaching at that time. During Chauncy's administration of eighteen years, there were twenty-two fellowship elections; and the average length of service of the teaching fellows was about two years and a half. Naturally, with a Corporation of such fluctuating membership, and so young withal, President and Overseers remained the effective government of Harvard College after 1650 as before. From the records, I gain the impression that until Governor Dudley and President Leverett reorganized it in 1707, the Corporation was neither regarded nor treated with much respect; that the President governed the College with the aid of such Overseers as were interested, and treated the tutors as senior students assisting him in discipline and instruction, rather than as his fellows. Before the Charter was a month old, the original teaching fellows began to resign, as we may see by a brief analysis of stipend payments and dates.4 SAMUEL MATHER (A.B. 1643), born in 1626, had been a tutor since 1646, and in that period received £9 8J 6\d from the College Corn. Cotton Mather, his nephew, tells how he 'read 1. Noteworthy is the absence, in the Harvard Charter, of any provision for vacating the fellowships at the end of a term of years, as in the Founder's Statutes of Emmanuel College. If Dunster could have found the money he would doubtless have used one or two of the fellowships to support theological research. 2. For fellows' stipends, see beginning of Chapter I V . 3. F. H. C., p. 449. 4. The facts about these men are drawn mainly from Sibley's Harvard Graduates, Chesholme's Steward's Accounts (C. S. M., xxxi), the list of distribution of 'colledge come' in C. ί . Μ., xv. 180, and A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised (1934).

16

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

his Last Philosophy-Lecture, in the Colledge-Hall' to an audience of weeping students, who put on 'Tokens of Mourning' when he left the College. 1 This sad occasion must have been around June 5, 1650, when Mather began preaching in Boston. On October 19 he signed Samuel Malbone's diploma as socius. Before the end of that year he was on his way to England, and to a notable career in Ireland. S A M U E L D A N F O R T H (A.B. 1643), four months Mather's junior, had been a tutor since 1644, as well as a compiler of almanacs and a writer of verse. He may have left before Mather, and certainly remained but a short time after; for on September 24, 1650 he was ordained Teacher of the Church in Roxbury. 2 Danforth retained his college study until March 1650/51,3 and probably remained a fellow without stipend until 1654. JONATHAN M I T C H E L L (A.B. 1647) was two years older than Danforth. From the College Corn he received £26 as 'fellow 3 yeers'; hence he must have been appointed tutor immediately upon graduation. His last stipend was paid on September 17, 1650; on August 21 he had been ordained Pastor of the Church in Cambridge. On October 19 he signed Malbone's diploma as socius. According to Steward Chesholme's accounts, Mr. Mitchell ordered from the college kitchen 'a Super on his weedinge (sic) night,' November 19, 1650, which the college poetasters celebrated with epithalamia. Early in 1651 he gave up his college study, but for some years enjoyed a fellow's privilege of ordering beer from the college buttery. Mitchell probably remained a fellow of Harvard College until his death in 1668.• C O M F O R T STARR (A.B. 1647), born c. 1624, was paid £11 IOJ from the College Corn for being 'fellow part of 2 yeers,' and ι. Magnolia (1702), book iv. 144-45. 2. Treasurer Danforth's accounts (C. S. M., xv. 180) list ' M r Samuel Danforth, Reader and fellow 6 yeares,' £56,13* 8d. The title Reader does not occur elsewhere in our records; probably it means that at first Danforth was an assistant to the two earliest tutors, Bulkeley and Downing; he was but eighteen years old in September 1644. Chesholme's accounts (C. S. M., x x x i . 21) charge him with no commons and sizings after the quarter ending June 14, 1650 and only js for that quarter, showing that he was not then living in college; but the retention of his study suggests that he was still teaching. 3. C. S. M., x x x i . 65. 4. Magnolia, book iv. 173. Mitchell also signed as socius the diplomas granted to William Stoughton on August 2, 1651 and to Joshua Ambrose on July 1,16J4. Copies in Oxford University Archives.

CHARTER OF 1650

17 received his last stipend on September 17, 1650. He signed Mai bone's diploma as socius on October 19, but shortly after returned to England, where a long and interesting career awaited him. SAMUEL EATON (A.B. 1649), eldest son of Governor Eaton,

born in 1630, must have begun to teach between his Commencement and the granting of the Charter, since he received from the College Corn (which petered out in 1653) the comparatively generous stipend of £34 7s 6d for being ' fellow 1 yeer and \ ' ; and the last recorded payment to him in the Steward's accounts was on March 11, 1652/53. Eaton lived in college until December 1653, when he returned to the family seat at New Haven. On June 7, 1654 the Board of Overseers voted that 'if Mr. Sam: Eaton return to be Resident at the Coll: at or before the Next Commencment he shall Enjoy his Fellowship. ' 1 Eaton did not return. The previous month he had been elected a magistrate of New Haven Colony—the first Harvard graduate to receive an important political office—and in New Haven he remained until his death the following year. Thus, out of the five young men named Fellows in the Charter of 1650, almost all had slipped away within a few months. By October 1650, shortly after the new academic year began, only one was left. ' Matchless Mitchel,' to be sure, was living next door in Shepard's old parsonage, and 'the Colledge was nearer unto his Heart, than it was to his House';a but he was no longer shouldering part of the teaching burden. Danforth was in Roxbury; Mather and Starr were in Boston, or on their way to England; twenty-year-old Samuel Eaton, the nephew of President Dunster's unfortunate predecessor, was the sole and senior teaching fellow!3 His nineteen-year-old classmate, little Urian Oakes, was added to the Corporation before the year 1650 was out,4 and the Class of 1649 supplied a third teaching fellow, John Collins, the next year.5 Oakes remained about three years, but 'Sir Collenes,' after teaching ι . C o p y by Nicholas Sever from College Book I I , in a document in Harvard College Papers (H. U . Archives), I. 136. 2. book iv. 1 8 1 . 3 . H e is called 'Senior fellow' by Chesholme (C. S. M., x x x i . 274). 4. H e appears as ' S i r okes fellow' in Chesholme (C. S. M., x x x i . 2 7 - 2 8 ) . 5. From Collins's accounts {id. 3 5 - 3 7 , 274) it is not clear when his undergraduate exhibition ended, and his fellow's 'deuident' or stipend began. Possibly not until 1 6 5 2 . H e signed William Stoughton's diploma as on August 2 , 1 6 5 1 .

Magnalia,

socius

18

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

eighteen months, went to England in search of adventure. His place was taken by Michael Wigglesworth ( A . B . 1 6 5 1 ) . It would be interesting to know what Dunster thought of this situation. It is clear enough from his memorandum of December 1653 1 that he did not like it; but it seems probable that he was prepared for it, and felt that much worse things could happen to the College than a rapid turnover of fellows. Perhaps he trusted that the Lord would provide the wherewithal for five fellowship stipends. But when the Lord did provide, Dunster used the money for other purposes. On August 6, 1650, just as the academic year was opening, a ship entered Boston Harbor bringing the Eleuthera donation, valued at £124.2 Dunster might have used this for fellows' stipends; instead, he spent it 'to inlarge our room.' Relief of overcrowding, maintaining that 'Collegiate way of living' which had been established with such sacrifice, was evidently more important in his eyes than a full fellowship. He could carry on the teaching himself, somehow, with two tutors. What necessity dictated under Dunster became the practice until 1685. When a new tutor was wanted, the Corporation chose a young graduate to its fellowship, and paid him a stipend as long as he resided and taught. These active fellows are sometimes distinguished in the records from the nonresidents as 'Resident Fellows,' 'Fellows upon the Place,' 'Fellows on the Foundation,' and 'Fellows of the House.' 3 The term 'Senior Fellow' in every instance before 1707 noted by me was given to the senior teaching fellow, not to the senior fellow of the Corporation.4 It seems probable that after he gave up teaching, the former tutor was allowed to retain his fellowship without stipend, provided he lived near enough to attend Corporation meetings, and that his place was not wanted for a teaching fellow. This practice seems neither to have been anticipated in the Charter nor recognized in the formula for admitting new fellows. When a vacancy occurred in the Corporation, the Charter authorized the remaining number,' procuring the pres1. See above, p. 15. 2. See Chapter I I I . 3. B u t , as Mr. Matthews shows in C. S. M., x v . pp. cxxxiv-cxxxv, these variants of ' F e l l o w ' are used very loosely in the records. 4. T h e marginal entry by President Leverett (id. 228) was possibly made during the fellowship controversy of 1720-23.

CHARTER OF 1650

19

ence of the Ouerseers of the Colledge and by their counsell and consent . . . to elect a new President Fellowes or Treasurer so oft and from tyme to tyme as any of the said person or persons shall dye or be remoued.' As it was seldom practicable for the Corporation and Overseers to meet at the same time, the practice early grew up for the Corporation to elect, and the Overseers to confirm or reject.1 After the confirmation, the President presented the new fellow to the Board of Overseers, and addressed him as follows: 2 I. Praebebis omnimodam debitam reverentiam Honorandis Magistratibus ac Reverendis Presbyteris et ргэеsidi, Collegij Inspectoribus. 1. Religiose in te suscipies curam dum hie commoraberis observandi singulas sa'.utares Leges, Statuta et privilegia hujus Societatis, quantum in te situm est; atque etiam ut observentur ab omnibus hujus Collegij membris in singulo uniuscuj usque munere. 3. Omnes et singulos Studentes qui tutelae tuae committuntur, aut in posterum commitendi sunt, ut promoveas in omni tarn Divinä quam Humana Literaturä, pro suo cujusque captu, atque ut moribus honeste ac inculpate se gerant, summopere curabis. 4. Sedulo prospicies nequid detrimenti Collegium capiat, quantum in te situm est, sive in ejus sumptibus, siv£ in sedificio, structura, Fundis, proventibus, cseterisque omnibus quae nunc ad Collegium pertinent aut dum hie egeris pertinere possint.

Y o u shall observe all due reverence to the Honored Magistrates the Reverend Elders and the President, Overseers of the College. Y o u shall religiously undertake, as long as you are in residence here, to obey all and singular the salutary Laws Statutes and Privileges of this Society, so far as in you lies; and also to see that they be obeyed by all members of this College, each according to his own function. Y o u shall take care to advance in all learning, divine and humane, each and every student who is or will be entrusted to your tutelage, according to their several abilities; and especially to take care that their conduct and manners be honorable and without blame. Y o u shall be carefully on the watch, so far as in you lies, that the College suffer no harm, either in expenditures or in buildings, construction, estates, revenues, or in any and every other thing now appertaining to the College or which may appertain while you are acting here.

ι . In our own day the practice is more conformable to the strict terms of the Charter. T h e Corporation having decided whom they wish to elect, and obtained his consent to serve, hold a meeting at the same time with the Overseers, but in a different room. T h e President asks the Overseers' permission to elect. T h e election is held. T h e new Fellow's, or Treasurer's, or President's name is then presented to the Overseers for confirmation or rejection. 2. Formula Socijs admittendis, C. S. M., x v . 36-37; cf. Danforth's copy, pp. 177— 78. T h e first draft, in an unidentified hand, comes between two entries in President Chauncy's hand; but the order of entries in College Book I is impossible to determine.

ίο

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

The Governor of Massachusetts, as President of the Board of Overseers, or, in his absence, the senior Overseer present, then addressed the new fellow: Quod etiam ad nos (Collegij Inspectors) spectat, pollicemur nos tibi non defuturos esse, quibuscunque tua intererit: Imo vero te confirmabimus authoritate ac potestate nostra in omnibus tuis legitimis administrationibus, contra quoscunque contumaces: E t pro Collegij facultatibus erogabimus tibi Idonea stipendia (i.e. pro modulo nostro quae Sufficiant ad victum et amictum et Literaturam tuam promovendam.

So far as concerns ourselves, the Overseers of the College, we promise not to fail you wherein your duty lies; on the contrary, we shall support you with our power and authority in all your lawful administrations against any contumacious persons whatsoever. And according to the facilities of the College we shall pay you a suitable stipend, in accordance with our supply, for clothing and victuals and the promotion of your learning.

The striking thing about this formula is the inferentially superior power of the Overseers over the Corporation. The Overseers promise to back up the Fellows if their authority is challenged; and although the title to all college property is vested in the Corporation by the Charter of 1650, it is the Overseers who promise a suitable stipend to the Fellows. In other words, the formula recognized the de facto situation of Dunster's and Chauncy's day, when the college funds were insufficient to support a teaching faculty, and the resident fellows were young Bachelors of Arts pursuing their 'Literatura' while engaged in tutoring undergraduates. But it is assumed that every fellow, when appointed, will be a resident teaching fellow.1 Later in the century, when the turnover of tutors was particularly rapid, a non-resident cleric was sometimes appointed to a vacancy on the Corporation. Thus, when Jonathan Mitchell died in 1668 his former colleague Samuel Danforth was reappointed to a fellowship, without any expectation that he would reside or teach; and Increase Mather (A.B. 1656), The similarly worded formula for admitting Scholars of the House (printed in Chapter I V , below) is in Chauncy's hand. But both may have been adopted under Dunster, and copied into the records in Chauncy's time. I. The phrases 'dum hie commoraberis* and 'dum hie egeris' in §§ a and 4 are also found in the formula for admitting Scholars of the House (see Chapter IV), hence they cannot have been intended to recognize a non-resident and non-responsible fellow, as President Leverett later claimed.

CHARTER OF 1650

21

when settled over the Second Church in Boston, was elected a fellow in 1675. Another development first appears in the records in 1667/68; a tutor is appointed with the title Probationer or Probationer Fellow, and tried out for a few months before becoming a full-fledged Fellow of Harvard College. 1 Circumstances, accordingly, soon brought about a deflection from the conventional English pattern of college fellowship and government laid down in the Charter. First, we find a fellow giving up his college residence and teaching duties, yet retaining his fellowship without stipend. Within twenty years, the class of probationers comes into existence, and middle-aged ministers are appointed to fellowships, with no expectation of residence or teaching. Until 1692 every college teacher except the probationers was also a fellow, but not every fellow taught in college. After the resumption of the Charter in 1707 the practice began of appointing as tutors men who were not chosen fellows, even when they made good, and a vacancy existed. A majority of the Corporation was composed of settled ministers of Boston and neighboring towns; but there was always at least one tutor on the Corporation until 1780, when Caleb Gannett resigned. The year before, the Corporation had taken a new departure by electing a distinguished layman, James Bowdoin, to its fellowship; and the practice then began of filling the Corporation with 'solid men of Boston'—lawyers, jurists, physicians, financiers, and an occasional statesman, bishop, or man of letters. Thus the Corporation developed from a fellowship of resident tutors into a board of non-resident trustees; and the Board of Overseers, from being a highly watchful governing board of magistrates and ministers, has become a sort of academic House of Lords which Does nothing in particular, And does it very well. I. C.S.M.xv. 210, 56, 57, 65; and see xvi, index. It is not clear from the records that the first Probationer Fellow, Joseph Pynchon, was ever chosen to the Corporation. The second, Daniel Gookin (A.B. 1669), was 'chosen probationer' on May 27, and Fellow of the College on September IJ, 1673.

22

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY THE

TREASURER

According to the Charter, one of the seven members of the Corporation is the Treasurer, 1 whose presence is necessary at meetings in which ' bargainee for Landes and Tenements' are made. Thomas Danforth, whose curious family arms 2 seem to have destined him to some form of stewardship, was named Treasurer of Harvard College in the Charter. 3 He was supposed to relieve Dunster of the custody of the college 'stock' or estate, which had been one of the President's selfimposed duties. But the two men were not congenial. Danforth later testified for Appleton in one of his several suits against Dunster, 4 and acted as John Glover's attorney in another suit against Dunster, 5 who for his part refused to allow a mere Treasurer to interfere with the fiscal affairs of the College. Danforth refers to Dunster as 'Tre[asure]r de facto,' and ι . Also called ' Burser' in the Charter. Bursar was, and still is, a common synonym for a college treasurer in England; at Harvard it never seems to have been used in that sense. 2. ' W e often seal with a single ey humane in a plain field Argent, only there is a Diamond at the bottom of the field. N o w I, for m y own part, know nothing but p r e scription and custom to plead for our use of it. 'Tis true that King Charles the First twice sent for my grandfather Danforth, offering him the honour of knighthood. . . Letter of 1698 from John Danforth (A.B. 1677), nephew of Thomas Danforth, in 5

Coll. Μ. H. S., ι. 447.

3. Thomas Danforth (1622-1699) was an elder brother of Samuel Danforth, Fellow of the College, and son of Nicholas Danforth, ' a Gentleman of such Estate and Repute in the World, that it cost him a Considerable Sum to escape the Knighthood, which K . Charles I. imposed on all of so much Per Annum' (Magnalia, book iv. 154). Thomas was born at Framlingham in Suffolk (where his father 'had a fine Mannour') in 1622 or 1623; emigrated in 1634 with his brother and father, who, dying about 1638, committed his sons to the paternal oversight of Thomas Shepard. Thomas Danforth showed an early aptitude for business, and became a great landowner, merchant, public servant, and politician, and the father of twelve children. From 1652 he resided near the corner of Kirkland and Oxford Streets, and acquired a large part of Cambridge between that region and the Charlestown line. The Norton estate was the last part of it to remain intact. Danforth occupied a variety of offices from Recorder of Deeds up to Judge of the Superior Court, Deputy-Governor of Massachusetts B a y , President of the Province of Maine, and Commissioner of the United Colonies. He shared Eliot's and Gookin's humane policy toward the Indians, and condemned the witch trials in 1692. N o other person had so long, intimate, and important a connection with Harvard in the seventeenth century. 4. Middlesex Court Records, East Cambridge, files, Appleton v. Dunster, 1655; deposition dated Dec. 25, 1655. 5. Middlesex Court Records, Docket Book, Pulsifer transcript, 1. 92. Dunster and Danforth had adjoining grants in the Cambridge Ox Pasture, where perhaps the trouble began.

CHARTER

OF

1650

23

records that 'The Severall donations made to the Colledge, dureing the time that mr Dunster was President of said Society, was by said mr Dunster received and distributed, according to the appoyntment of the Overseers,' 1 His treasurer's accounts begin only in October 1654, after Dunster had resigned. Accordingly it was not until Chauncy's administration that the Treasurer of Harvard College assumed the functions that he has ever since discharged: that of managing, investing, and collecting the income from the college funds. Every Harvard treasurer but one has been a layman; 2 and most of them, merchants or men of affairs. P R I V I L E G E S AND

IMMUNITIES

The concluding clauses of the Charter of 1650 confer upon Harvard certain privileges immemorially associated with universities. The college property, up to a certain annual revenue, is exempt from taxation. This ancient privilege has become an American institution, much to the disgust of municipalities. Members of the House, including all students and not more than ten servants, are privileged persons according to the Charter, Their personal property is 'exempt from all manner of tolle Customes and excise'; their total estate up to £100 ' a man' is free from all colony rates or taxes; their persons are exempt from the burdens of civil office, military training, and the nightly turn at watching and warding against fires, nightprowlers, and Indians. All these personal privileges appear to have lapsed with the American Revolution; but the property exemption of the College has been both extended and curtailed by subsequent legislation. No jurisdictional powers were granted by the Charter to the Corporation; another Act of the General Court in 1656 was required in order to empower President and Fellows 'accordinge to their best discretion, to punnish all misdemenours of the youth in their societie, either by fine or whippinge in the hall, . . . not exceedinge ten shillinges or ten stripes for one offence.' 3 But the medieval tradition of the university's policing 1. C. S. M., xv. 180. Danforth then refers to a later entry {id. 186) wherein Dunster 'makes Himselfe Debtor 110li ιgsh id\. And gives Himselfe Creditt. — 119.04.0.0.' From comparison of figures, this must have been an account for one year or less. 2. William Brattle, Treasurer 1713-15, is the exception. 3. Mass. Bay Rees., HI. 417. Reaffirmed in the Charter of 1672.

24

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D UNIVERSITY

itself and taking jurisdiction over all conflicts between clerks and l a y m e n persisted. In J a n u a r y 1658/59 (so President C h a u n c y deposed) ' t h e r e w a s a great disorder at C a m b r i d g e in the night and fighting betweene the schollars and some of the toune. . . . the schollars t h a t offended therin (viz. H a b i a h S a v a g e , T h o m a s Parish and John H a g b u r n e ) were openly censured for the same in the Colledge Hall according to the order of the general C o u r t . ' 1 In consequence of this, our first recorded town-and-gown riot, the Corporation passed the following resolve on J u n e 10, 1659: Whereas there are great complayntes of the exorbitant practises of Some students of this Coll. by their abusive wordes and accions to the Watch of this Towne. The Corporaccion accounting it their duty by all lawful meanes to seeke the redress thereof for the future, do hereby declare to all persons whom it may concerne, That the Watch of this Town from time to time, and at all times shall have full power of inspeccion into the manners and orders of all persons related to the Coll, whether with in or with out the precincts of the said Coll. houses and lands, as by law they are impowred to act in cases within the limmitts of their Towne, any law, vsage, or costome to the contrary not withstanding. Provided alwayes we Judge it not convenient, neither do we allow that any the said Watchmen should lay violent hands on any of the students, being found with in the precincts of the Coll. yard, otherwise then so as they may secure them vntill they may informe the President or some of the fellowes, neither shall they in any case break into their Chambers or studjes, without speciall order from President or fellowes, or some other superiour Authourity, but in all cases as need may require shall seasonably inform either the President or some of the fellowes, who will take care to exammine the matter, for the effectual! healing of all such disorders, Also in case any student of this Coll, shalbe found absent from his lodging after nine of the clock at night, he shalbe responsible for and to all complayntes of disorder in this kind, that by testimony of the Watch, or other, shall appear to be done by any student of the Coll, and shalbe adjudged guelty of the said Crime, vnless he can purge himselfe by sufficient witnesse.2 W h i l e disclaiming a n y i m m u n i t y for their scholars from civil jurisdiction, the President and Fellows do nevertheless protest against the town w a t c h invading the Y a r d , and undertake ι. Sibley, п. 11-ia. 2. C. S. M., xv. 44.

25 themselves to police the college precints. The modus vivendi thus early established has lasted to this day.1 Of late years city police and college students have more than once 'laid violent hands' on one another; but these 'exorbitant practises' have taken place outside the sacred Yard, which is effectively policed by the officers known to undergraduates as the 'Yard cops.' CHARTER OF 1650

Such was the formal constitution of the College adopted within twelve years of its birth. Fortunately, our founders had well learned the vanity of excessive detail in collegiate foundations and charters. The Act of 1642 and the Charter of 1650 created a government open to so varied interpretation that far more depended upon the precedents created, the traditions inaugurated, and the policy followed during the next generation than upon the instruments themselves. This praiseworthy humility of the founders in the face of an unknown future has enabled a Charter issued in 1650 to an arts college of fifty or sixty members to serve equally well a great university in the twentieth century. I. One of the most deservedly unpopular acts of President Quincy's administration was his announcement that the Corporation would call on the civil authorities to detect and punish students who damaged college property. It was properly felt that this was contrary to university tradition and practice.

II D U N S T E R S T R U G G L E S ON ι650-1654 The incorporation of Harvard College was expected to increase her endowment, now that continuity and financial responsibility were guaranteed. But there was no immediate rush o f ' well deuoted persons . . . to giue and bestowe sundry guiftes legacies lands and Revennewes for the aduancement of all good literature artes and Sciences.' During the last four years of his administration, as in the first ten, Dunster had to carry on with tuition fees, Charlestown ferry rent, and voluntary contributions.1 The ' Colledge Corne' contributions of a peck of wheat or a pine-tree shilling or the equivalent in wampum from every New England family so disposed, had been a disappointment to Dunster. His first attempt, in 1647, to enforce and extend the corn payments had been unsuccessful, doubtless because the United Colonies hoped to shift the financial burden of Harvard College onto English shoulders. And although the Act of Parliament incorporating the Society for Propagation of the Gospel in New England 2 included no reference to colleges for English youth, some way might be found to extract money from this 'New England Company' for Harvard. A suggestion to that end was evidently the burden of an application by the President and Fellows in 1651 to the Commissioners of the United Colonies, the gist of which may be inferred from the Commissioners' reply.3 They admit that the Old College needs heavy repairs, and that new buildings are wanted to house the increase of students; but they regard the President's suggestion of obtaining money from the English Society as unpromising. 1. Much financial history of this decade 1640-50 is told in F. H. C., Chapter X X I . 2. See F. H. C., pp. 321-22. 3. Plym. Col. Rees., ix. 216-17.

DUNSTER STRUGGLES ON

27

They will write Edward Winslow ' to enquire the mind of the corpracion therein,' and will gladly fall in with Mr. Dunster's views if the corporate mind be favorably disposed; 'but if an other enterpretacion be made in England,' the Commissioners will' Improue theire seuerall enterests in the Collonies' to push the old scheme of voluntary contributions ' b y pecks halfbushels and bushels of Wheat; . , . and heerin if the Massachusetts please to give a leading example the Rest may probably the more Reddyly follow.' The Massachusetts General Court, while awaiting a favorable reply from England, recommended the Governing Boards of the College in 1652 to request, through local ministers, a voluntary contribution for immediate and necessary repairs. 1 This, apparently, was done successfully; for Treasurer Danforth lists £250 ζs 6d given 'towards the repair of the Colledge in the year 1654. and 1655' from twenty-three gentlemen of Boston and the neighborhood, ' a widdow in Roxbury,' and a community contribution of Charlestown. Mr. Richard Saltonstall led off with £ 1 0 4 , the largest gift from an individual that the College received in Dunster's administration. 2 V O L U N T A R Y C O N T R I B U T I O N S OF

1652-1654

Before that money had come in, the B a y Colony, apparently despairing of English aid, took action along the line already suggested by Dunster toward extending and regularizing the system of town contributions. A t the opening of the October session in 1652, after a long preamble on the need of 'advauncment of learninge' for Commonwealth and churches, and the sad event that 'the first founders doe weare away apace, and that it grows more and more difficult to fill places of most eminence,' since College graduates ' as soone as they are growne vpp, ready for publicke vse, . . . leaue the country, and seeke for and accept of imployment elsewhere,' 3 the Court recommended 'the raysinge of such a sume as may be imployd for the mayntenance of the president and certayne fellowes and poore schol1. Mass. Bay Rees., HI. 275. 2. C. S. M., xv. 184-85; but cf. pp. 2 1 3 - 1 4 , whence one infers that Saltonstall's and Wilson's contributions were used for other purposes in Chauncy's administration, Saltonstall's being combined with other funds which he procured from England in 1659. Cf. Chapter X V I I I . 3. For the emigration of early Harvard students to England, see F. H. C., p. 319.

28

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D UNIVERSITY

lers of H a r v a r d Colledge.' I t ordered every town to appoint ' one meete person to take the v o l u n t a r y subscriptiones' and to m a k e return thereof; and it urged the other United Colonies to do likewise. 1 Connecticut took the hint and provided £20 for a fellowship; * b u t no record has been found of any community contributions from N e w H a v e n or N e w P l y m o u t h after 1652. T h e B a y jurisdiction, however, had now been extended over N e w H a m p shire and southern M a i n e ; and far-off Y o r k was one of the towns t h a t responded. M o s t touching are the lists of subscribers that h a v e been preserved, the minister and squire leading off with a pound or two, and the plain H e n r y s , Johns, and Rogers following along with a few shillings or even pence. Selectmen or constable sometimes wrote a letter regretting that so little could be given, such as this from A n d o v e r : 3 Honored Sir. Upon the note I received from your selfe and the rest of the Comittee for the Colledge I calld our Inhabitants together, and acquainted them therwith, who well approues of the care of the Court for the advancement of Learning and are willing to be helpfull according to their ability: but by reason our Towne is very small consisting of about ao poore familyes (few whereof haue corne for their owne necessity) they found themselues unable to giue any considerable summ to the case aforesaid, yet to shew their willingness to forward so good a worke they haue generally agreed to giue a pecke of wheat this year for the least family, others two, some a bushell, what it will exactly Come to I cannot yet tell, we hope God will enable us to doe the like hereafter, or to agree upon a certeyn somme for the wholle as wee shall finde may best sute the occasion of the Colledge and our abilityes. So I rest your worships servant to command. Andover 21th Novemb. (53) D A N I E L POORE. Constable. Y e t these '20 poore f a m i l y e s ' g a v e the College £2 worth of wheat. 1. Mass. Bay Rees., m . 279 ff., October 18,1652. 2. Conn. Col. Rees., 1. 250; F. H. C., p. 449. 3. H. U. Archives, Corp. Papers, 1636-60, together with returns (or excuses) from Cambridge, Concord, Dorchester, Haverhill, Hingham, Medfield, Salem, Topsfield, Watertown, Wenham, Woburn, and York, Maine. Cf. W . S. Tilden, History oj Medfield, p. 59; Wenham Town Records (1930), p. 8; Boston Town Records in Report

DUNSTER

STRUGGLES

ON

29

Concord adopted a new method of raising her self-imposed quota of £5 per annum: the town and church, meeting together, agreed to assess this sum in the same manner as other rates and taxes, so that every ratable person would contribute something, and the wealthier inhabitants in proportion to their property, in so far as the general tax laws regarded inequalities of wealth. Their agreement is on record: A N A G R E E M T MADE AND A G R E E D VPON BY THE T O W N E AND C H U R C H OF C O N C O R D CONCERNING THE C O L L E D G E A T T C A M B R I D G E , MADE A U G .

11,

1653.

It is agreed by the company of the sayd towne and church, to giue yearely the summe of fiue pounds for the vse of the sayd Colledge to be leauyed vpon the same towne after the same manner as the other rates are leauyed, and to be payd in att or before the last of the moneth of May. the sayd yearely summe of 5I1 to continue for the space of seuen yeares, and then to be ether renewed if it shall appeare that it may be improued for good, or otherwise to be att libertye to doe according to the state of things then being. And for the terme of seuen yeares aforesayd, the sayd towne of Concord doth desire that this order may be recorded in the court, and confirmed by the autoritye of the same. In wittnes of our consent hereto, we haue hereto sett our handes, the day and yeare aboue written.1 Whilst Concord's method reached individual 'slackers,' it did not touch the less generous communities. Salem, for instance, still smarting over the loss of the College to Cambridge, wrote ' T o the Honoured Committee for Harvet Coledge' that a town meeting had been h e l d , ' but of those that did apeare which was about 50 odd: 50 of them with drew' as soon as they heard what it was about! 2 A n d Salem gave nothing. Hingham as an excuse for declining alleged ' that many students and scholars brought up at the Colledg . . . are continually departing out of the C o u n t r y , ' 3 a condition which the contribution had of Boston Record Commissioners for 1877, pp. 113, 118, 120. T h e Boston committee consisted of John Cogan, John Newgate, and Samuel Cole, all college benefactors. ι . C. S. M., xii. 234, with facsimile. Thirty-eight holograph signatures and four signatures by mark are appended. T h e Reverend Peter Bulkeley, father of four Harvard alumni, heads the list, and Simon Willard, whose son Samuel Willard (the future Vice-President) was about to enter college, follows. 2. Letter of Dec. 10, 1653, signed by Roger Conant, Jacob Barney, and the other selectmen, in H . U. Archives, Corp. Papers, 1636-60. 3. Letter of selectmen, Nov. 28, 1653, ibid. Cf. subscription list in Appendix A , doc. 3.

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HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

been designed to remedy. For it was understood that everything collected should be used for fellows' stipends. About the time this subscription was well under way, the General Court appointed a Committee to Examine the State of the College, with Increase Nowell as chairman. 1 T h e s e ' Commissioners for the Colledg,' as Dunster called them, reported to the General Court ( М а у з , 1654) estimating the sum 'in view' at £572 3s ι i d ' but not payable vntill next haruest most of it.' * Out of this they proposed to assign about £ 7 4 a year to President's and fellows' stipends, to pay former fellows' debts to the Steward, to repair the Old College, purchase another house and lot, and lay out the balance on land 'that may yeald an anual Rent vnto the vses of the Coledge.' 3 All this was left to the Overseers' discretion by the General Court. 4 The records indicate that only £349 is was collected and paid to the College s — so poor a showing that the General Court abandoned this voluntary system as a failure. On October 18, 1654, alleging that 'nothing haue binn hitherto obteined from seuerall persons and tounes, although some haue donne very liberally and freely,' the Court decided to try another method of supporting 'so good a seminary of knowledg and virtue.' It ordered a yearly tax levy of £ 1 0 0 , over and above the country rate, 'for the behoofe and maintenance of the president and fellowes.' Each taxpayer was allowed to deduct from his share of this assessment whatever he had subscribed voluntarily under the recent scheme of town contributions.6 Six days after the College had thus been assured of a small fixed revenue from the Colony, Henry Dunster resigned the presidency; and the history of this annual tax for 'behoofe and maintenance' belongs to the administration of President Chauncy. 1. Appendix A, doc. I, Sept. 10,1653. 2. Id. docs. 2, 3, and 4. 3. Id. doc. 2. 4. Order of May 3,1654, Appendix A, doc. 4; cf. Mass. Bay Rees., га. 348. 5. 'To severall Sums paid Mr Dunster on Colledg account 349 02 oo* — audit signed January 20,1654/55 by committee of General Court appointed October 18,1654, Mass. Archives, c. 49. As no other payments from Colony to College are recorded during the previous year, excepting the £ 1 5 interest on the Mowlson fund, which is mentioned separately by the same auditing committee, it seems that this sum must represent the town contributions. As no others are recorded in Danforth's accounts beginning in October 1654, it is probable that no more came in thereafter (C. S. M., xv. 212-14). 6. Mass. Bay Rees., iv. part i. 205.

DUNSTER STRUGGLES ON T H E PEQUOT LANDS

31

1

One series of land grants by the Colony to the College in Dunster's administration has a long and interesting history, although it brought the College nothing in the end. In answer to the Corporation's petition for financial aid in 1652, the General Court of Massachusetts on October 26 granted the College 800 acres, with 'libertie to imploy such as they please to finde out such a place or places as maybe most commodious and convenient for them, and to retourne to this Court what they have donne therein, to the end it maybe laid out and confirmed vnto them.' In the next century President Wadsworth could not find 'that this was ever pursu'd or laid out'; it was probably regarded as swallowed up in another and similar grant of 2000 acres made in 1653, 'for the incouragement of Harvard Colledge and the society thereof, and for the more comfortable maintenance and provicion for the president, Fellows, and students thereof in time to come.' 3 This generous allotment was ' to be taken vp in two or three places, where it maybe found convenient.' In their choice, the Overseers 3 showed bad judgment. Instead of selecting land in Middlesex County, or somewhere within easy distance of the College, they sent Treasurer Danforth to lay out the 2000 acres in the Pequot country, the southeastern corner of the present State of Connecticut, too far away for careful oversight, and in a region where the Bay Colony had only a doubtful claim. But it must be admitted that Danforth had an eye for land. He chose one of the most fertile and lovely regions of New England for the college farms: a pasture country of softly rounded hills, where the eye is continually delighted by green slopes divided by gray stone walls that swing over the horizon; a land of oak woods, handsome square farmhouses, and hayfields rippled by the southwest wind that blows fresh and cool off Long Island Sound. Unfortunately, the ample beauties of the 1. Dr. Charles M . Williams and Miss Elizabeth Holmes of Stonington, Connecticut, have given me valuable assistance in locating these grants; Dr. Williams's researches provided the data for the annexed map. 2. Mass. Bay Rees., iv. part i. 114,136. 3. Presumably the Overseers directed this, as they did all other matters of college finance. Their speculative interests overbore the best interests of the College. The Massachusetts magistrates were hastening to prejudge the boundary question by taking up grants in the Pequot country; and it would undoubtedly strengthen their case if

32

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Pequot country were appreciated by many others than her absentee landlords, the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The first Pequot farm of 500 acres, which was laid out by Danforth and confirmed to the College in 1658,1 is described as bounded by Wequetequock River, the wilderness, and ' a Path leading from Mystick unto Kechomaug or the wadeing place over the Pauquatucket River.' 2 This is the old Pequot trail, now called the O l d Post Road,' which (before the recent concreting, straightening, and general bedevilling) wound in a most charming manner among the knolls and ridges of that country; the wading place is near the bridge in the present town of Westerly, Rhode Island. It is easy to identify this grant today. Danforth included therein some of the most fertile lands in the Pequot country; and adjacent he laid out a 300-acre farm for himself, an acquisition which the Court, with easy-going liberality, confirmed at the same time.3 Following the Old Post Road to the west, past a great elm under which George Whitefield preached, and the old white meetinghouse of the First Church in Stonington, we come to the deep valley of the Mystic, above whose green-muffled slopes John Mason broke the power of the Pequots in the Fort Fight of 1637. Just above the head of navigation Treasurer Danforth laid out the second college grant, 500 acres 'begining about forty pole on the south side the brooke that runneth into the said riuer, neere to Goodman Culuers house, and extending from the said riuer hälfe a mile on each side thereof, and running vp the riuer forty poles aboue the north side of the swampe.' Up the valley ' vpon the great plaine, about two miles, more or lesse, from Goodman Culuers house,' came the third grant, with a 100-acre meadow thrown in. The fourth, Danforth chose in a very different location—a level, fertile peninsula then (and still) called Weekapaug, bounded by Block Island Sound, salt ponds, and a tract of rocky, barren upland.4 Harvard College were on the same side. But doubtless they felt that they were letting the College in on a good thing. ι . Mass. Bay Rees., rv. part i. 345; C. S. M., x v . 275. 2. Shown as no. 1 on the annexed map. Another boundary given is the land of William Cheesebrough, one of the first settlers of Stonington. The site of his house, marked by an inscription, is shown on the map, on the Anguilla River, the Wequetequock of the grant of 1658. 3. Mass. Bay Rees., iv. part i. 345. 4. Id. 344, and C. S. M., x v . 275. An eighteenth-century Culver house is a few hundred yards north of the old one, within grant (2). The description of (3) is unin-

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DUNSTER STRUGGLES ON

33

If the College had actually taken possession of these farms, all (and especially the last, which is now a thriving beach resort) would have brought in considerable revenue. Unfortunately they were outside the limits of the Bay patent, in a region claimed by right of conquest; and although the Pequot country east of the Mystic was adjudged to Massachusetts by the New England Confederation in September 1658, Connecticut promptly challenged the award and extended her jurisdiction almost to Narragansett Bay. 1 The Pequot country was then settled by land-hungry and rent-hating pioneers, who cheerfully squatted on the lands of the College and other Bay grantees, 'committing many acts of outrage and violence towards some of vs, possessing our lands and dispossessing our tennants as wel indians, as english, pulling downe some of our houses, burning vp our fences, takeing away our grass and hay and therby ocasionning the loss of our catle, with diuer other iniuries and wrongs.' 2 In 1672 the Bay Colony formally protested to Connecticut that the rights of the College and other grantees in the Pequot country had been violated.3 Two years later Connecticut voted ' to confirme the grants on the east side Pawcatuck River'—in territory then claimed by, and afterwards awarded to, Rhode Island—whilst 'for the lands on the west side Pawcatuck'—three out of the four—'whateuer grants are there made by the Massachusets within the limits granted to New London, whilst Mistick and Pawcatuck belonged to them, it is accounted to be of no value.' They offered 'to grant some recompence in som other place for these grants, when it is propownded for to this Court,' 4 and 500 acres were duly laid telligible; our location of it is but a guess. T h e eastern boundary of (4) was probably the little Weekapaug Brook, which was the old boundary between the Pequot and Niantic Indians. This grant is in the state of Rhode Island, the Pawcatuck River having been agreed upon as the colony boundary in 1703 (Roland M . Hooker, Boundaries oj Connecticut, p. 15). 1. Plym. Col. Rees., χ . aog; Hooker, op. cit., p. 4 ff. 2. Petition of Daniel Gookin, John Richards, treasurer of Harvard College, et al. to the General Assembly of Connecticut, M a y 1670 {Conn. Col. Rees., и . J45). Later in the same year the Corporation ordered the Treasurer to let out the Pequot farms, and compound with or eject squatters (С. S. M., x v . 51). Other entries in the College records {id. 52, 53, 216) seem to indicate that one of the Pequot farms was rented before 1668 to Captain George Denison, who did not pay his rent, and assigned an adjoining farm that he owned in lieu thereof. T h a t farm, too, was lost. 3. Conn. Col. Rees., it. 547. 4. Id. 227-28. There is a copy of this vote in Massachusetts Archives, L v i n . 89a.

34

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D

UNIVERSITY

o u t t o t h e C o l l e g e , on A p r i l 30, 1 6 7 5 . 1 B u t n e i t h e r f r o m this, n o r f r o m a n y of t h e original f o u r f a r m s , w a s t h e C o l l e g e e v e r a b l e to c o l l e c t r e n t ; all d r i f t e d i n t o t h e h a n d s o f s q u a t t e r s . T r e a s u r e r D a n f o r t h , in 1683, ' b i t t e r l y c o m p l a i n s o f h a r d u s a g e from Connecticut,' and declares t h a t ' some of H a r t f o r d C o l o n y a n d s o m e o f R h o d e I s l a n d b y v i o l e n c e ' dispossessed t h e C o l l e g e ' a n d h a v e b u i l t t h e r e o n . ' 2 O n e or t w o a t t e m p t s w e r e m a d e to o b t a i n redress in t h e e i g h t e e n t h c e n t u r y , b u t to n o a v a i l . P R I V A T E L A N D G R A N T S AND ANNUITIES

O n e o f t h e earliest g i f t s o f real e s t a t e t h a t p r o d u c e d r e v e n u e w a s a s a l t m a r s h o f 60 or 7 0 acres a t R u m n e y M a r s h , n e a r B o s t o n , w h i c h J o h n C o g a n d e v i s e d to t h e C o l l e g e in 1652, 3 a n d a f t e r w a r d s a c k n o w l e d g e d in t h e f o l l o w i n g c h a r t e r o f f e o f f m e n t : 4 January 16 165^ Mr. John Cogan merchant in boston in the 4 month 1652 gave and made delivery of one parsell of marsh liing situate in Rumley marsh . . . which parsell of marsh the Aforesayd John gave livery and seisin 5 of to Henery Dunster then President of Harvard Colledg for the use benifitt and behoofe of the President and fellows of the sayd Colledg soe long as they and their successors professe and teach the good knowledg of Gods holy word and works, and such Languages arts and sciences as truly and Christianly further the sayd good and profitable ends. Provided always that if any of the children or grandchildren of the said John shall come to be students in the saide Colledg then the[y] shall personally injoy the yearly revenue of the sayd land during their continuance in or relation to the sayd Colledg as Students. A n d provided that if the sayd Colledg be dissolved and learning there be dispised that then the sayd lands shall and actually doe returne to the sayd John and his heirs that now are or then shall be for ever as if the aforesayd conveyance had never bin m a d e . . . . 1. Conn. Col. Rees., Ii. 547. 2. So President Wadsworth recorded, C. S. M., x v . 277. T w o Rhode Island squatters were arrested, carried to Boston, and fined £40, but this did not stop them. H. U. Archives, Lands, 1. 4. 3. C. S. M., x v . 184; Mellen Chamberlain, Doc. Hist, of Chelsea, 11. 390. 4. Original in H. U. Archives, Deeds, together with plat and description made by John Gardner in 1716. J. Livery of seizin was an ancient English form of conveyance, which did not require a deed or a record. T h e two parties went to the actual piece of land that was to be conveyed, in company with whatever freemen they could collect, and the grantor, after describing the bounds in presence of the witnesses, gave livery of seizin by handing to the grantee a bit of turf from the land, or a stone, twig, or some such symbol.

DUNSTER STRUGGLES ON

35

And the aforesayd John by these presents giveth notice to all who are concerned in or about the gifts donations Contributions or provisions made or to be made for the said Coll: that this is that parsell of land from the first ordered and to this present day only intended as the gift of the said John to the Coll: In wittnesse whereof the said mr John Coggan and mr Henry Dunster that then was President of the Coll: have heerto sett their hands that this was the summe and substance of the aforesayd donation and the Conditions thereof from the beginning per me JOHN

COGAN

HENRY

DUNSTER.

witness. Thomas Danforth. M r . Cogan thought of everything! This ' College Marsh,' as it was locally called, was well situated on the ' Great Creek' or Pines River, in what is now the city of Revere. I t was promptly rented for £4 per annum, and in President Wadsworth's time brought in £20 to £αζ. τ T h e land promised to become more valuable in the early nineteenth century when the Salem turnpike (a continuance of the present Broadway) was constructed across its western end; and in 1831, after a ten years' lease at $133.33 per annum had expired, the College sold it to Edward H. Robbins for $1500.2 Harvard gained by this transaction, since the 'College Marsh,' after another century, is still pretty much in its pristine condition. Other gifts to the College were annuities perpetually charged on some parcel of real estate, and payable by the owner. M a j o r Robert Sedgwick of Charlestown, who later won fame in Cromwell's expedition against Jamaica, gave the College in 1646 a shop (or, according to another account, two small shops) 'standing by the great ordinary called the Ship T a v e r n ' in Boston. 3 This was the earliest parcel of real estate owned by the College that brought in revenue •—• but not for long. The shop was let for IOJ per annum in 1647; but before the end of ι . C. S. Μ., x v . 54, 209, 213-16, 253, 270; Proc. Μ. H. S., vi. 349. 2. Chamberlain, op. cit., 1.108, 126; 11. 289, 390; Harvard College treasurer's Report for 1831-32, p. 4; H. U. Archives, 'Lands, Miscellaneous,' 1. 57; Suffolk Deeds, c x v i i . 101 (with plan, which estimates the area somewhat over 53 acres) and CCCLVII. 292, where it is described as measuring 60 acres more or less. Robbins sold it to the Oriental Bank in 1837 for $5000, but the property is hardly worth that today. 3. C. S. Μ., x v . 209, 286-87. T h e Ship Tavern stood on the southwest corner of North and Clark Streets. Drake, Landmarks of Boston, p. 174.

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HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Dunster's administration the College relinquished it to William Phillips, keeper of the Ship Tavern, in exchange for a permanent annuity of 20.S. Although Phillips was a church member, and owned extensive properties in Maine, he declined to pay the annuity after getting possession of the shop; and, owing perhaps to some legal defect in the deed of transfer, Harvard College was never able to enforce payment. 1 So Major Sedgwick's gift was lost. The other annuity received in Dunster's administration is now yielding the College about three-fifths the original sum. In 1650 John Newgate, merchant of Boston, 2 established upon the College, on the rents of his farm at Rumney Marsh, an annuity of ' £ 5 per annum forever, towards the Maintenance of Lawfull, usefull and good Literature therin, and chiefly to the furtherance of the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and his Word and Will.' 3 This annuity appears to have been paid faithfully and regularly by the successive owners of the Newgate farm; in the eighteenth century it was used as an exhibition, or part scholarship, and often for descendants of the donor.4 In 1844, when the owners wished to cut up the farm into house lots, the Corporation consented to relinquish the annuity for a capital sum which would produce the same income at 5 per cent, namely, for $333.33.5 The fund, increased by only two years' income, now yields $15.05 annually to the general expenses of the Harvard Theological School. 1. Treasurer Danforth, in his inventory of 1654 (C. S. M., x v . 209), used the phrase 'which shops are made voyd by M r William Phillips . . . and the said Ship Taverne house ingaged for the annuall payment.' I t seems probable that Phillips claimed title to the shops against Sedgwick, and consented verbally to the annuity in return for the College's waiving its claim. 2. С. H. Pope, Pioneers of Mass., p. 327; N. E. H. G. R., х ш . 333-35. 3. C. S. M., x v i . 834. 4. Id. x v i , index. A t this period the annuity was usually paid in 'country pay' (provisions), and yielded but £4 in money. There is a Harvard Treasurer's receipt for the payment of £4 in bills of credit, for one year's annuity in 1721, in the ms. collection of Samuel L. Fuller, Esq.; and Grenville H. Norcross, Esq. has a receipt from Treasurer Brattle for £20 for five years' rent in 1697. ^ 'should have been £5 per annum,' explains the Treasurer, ' b u t being paid in money, £4 accepted.' See also 'Account of Lands belonging to H. С.,' H. U. Archives, 1. 15. 798. £. Report 0/ the Treasurer for 1843-44, p. 3; Statement of the treasurer for 1932-33, p. 258; Suffolk Deeds (Boston Court House), D X X I I . 148. The Newgate farm, which was considerably higher than the region about, is that part of Revere northwest of Broadway, between it and the Woodlawn Cemetery, and extending from the lots on the eastern side of Mountain Street through those on the western side of Fenno Street. It is now a residential district.

DUNSTER STRUGGLES ON

37

The Committee on the College reported on M a y 3,1654, with a careful account of the receipts and expenditures of the College from 1640 to 1652.1 From this it appears that the College received in these twelve years £266 i8j· Bd from the corn contributions,2 £39 19J ι\d from 'particuler guifts,' £59 14J $d from study rents, and £60 interest on the Mowlson-Bridges scholarship fund, which as yet was the only endowment that Harvard College possessed.3 Out of these revenues the College paid out £179 14J 4d to the teaching fellows, £118 i o j 8d for ' distributions vnto poore scolers,' £60 to the Mowlson scholars, and £84 5s 4d for building and repairs. Commons are not mentioned in the accounts, since the Steward's department was expected to support itself; but the committee made an interesting report of moneys received from tuition and Commencement. From 1642 through 1652, the College had taken in 49 B.A. and 23 M.A. Commencement fees at £3 each,4 and £233 i o j 3d in tuition money. President Dunster was debited with £40 from Commencement fees, with the whole amount of tuition money, with £50 salary paid him ' b y the cuntry' in 1640 and £56 in 1647, and 11 years' Charlestown ferry rent, £440. He was credited with £81 3J 5d 'for tuitions of straungers and scolers of other coloneyees,' 5 £40 for ' payments to scribes and officers and other things not so convenient to be expressed,' £20 extra allowances for fellows, and £10 for printing the Commencement theses for ten years. The balance, about £670, was allowed him as his salary for twelve years.6 Addition of all the payments and disbursements shows that, apart from the Steward's department, President Dunster ran Harvard College for twelve years on an average annual budget of £175. 1. Documents in H. U. Archives, Corp. Papers, 1636-60. 2. O f which £78 ι J j 3d from 'other coloneyes.' 3. Although the Colony grant of £400 and John Harvard's legacy are loosely referred to as 'endowments,' they were used for buildings and current expenses. 4. Also 5 poor scholars received degrees for nothing. The accounts mention only the £1 that the College kept; we know however from Chesholme's accounts that the standard commencement fee was £3. Presumably the balance went toward the commencement dinner. Dunster was credited £9 in the accounts for 'the first commencment feast' of 1642, which is known to have been a very plain one compared with those that followed. j . Y e t Chesholme's accounts prove that the 'foreign' students at Harvard paid tuition. 6. T h e committee's accounts do not agree; in one place Dunster is allowed £720, in another £668 6s 10d. T h e actual balance, it seems to me, was £670 7s. I t is suffi-

38

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

N o Airterican college president, it may safely be said, has succeeded in doing so much with so little money, as President Dunster. Possibly he could have done even better. Whether it was best for the College that he should have treated as mere figureheads the two treasurers, Pelham and Danforth, we have no means of knowing. The emissaries to England, who secured but small benefactions for the College, were not of his choosing. The system of voluntary contributions was not his device, but the best thing he could get out of the Confederation. The lack of bequests to Harvard College in the wills of prominent university alumni in New England, such as Governor Winthrop, John Cotton, and George Phillips, and of well-to-do men such as Governors Dudley, Eaton, and Haynes, suggests that President Dunster may not have been tactful in approaching the mighty. But the omission may equally well reflect the testators' preoccupation with their families, in a country of uncertain prospects; the depression of the sixteen-forties had quenched pioneer optimism. And throughout the century, comparatively few College benefactors belonged to famous families of the New England ruling class; they were merchants such as Cogan, Glover, Newgate, Keayne, and Webb. 1 After all, the main thing is that under Dunster's leadership the College not only kept alive but increased in numbers, reputation, and effectiveness. And we must not forget that the President and Fellows were supported in their devoted labors by the farmers of New England, who gave their strings of wampum, pine-tree shillings, and quarter-bushels of wheat to 'advance Learning and perpetuate it to Posterity.' ciently accurate to say that President Dunster received an average of £55 a year from all sources, through 16J2. ι . Note especially the list of contributions to the repair of the Old College in 1654 (C. Μ . , XV. 184, 213-14). Out of twenty-five donors only two (Saltonstall and Bellingham) were magistrates, and two more (John Allin and John Wilson) ministers. Y e t , as we shall see (Chapter V ) , it was this ruling class that provided Harvard with most of her students. And can there be any connection with the fact that Saltonstall and Bellingham led the opposition to Winthrop in the House of Assistants?

III ' T O I N L A R G E OUR R O O M ' ι650-1672 'And when the Colony could not relieve us,' wrote Dunster, 'God hath sent Supplies even from poor Cyguotea to inlarge our room.' 1 It is literally true that a donation from a company of exiled and hungry puritans in the Bahaman island of Cigotea, or Eleuthera, in the year 1650, made possible the most important addition to the college grounds and buildings since 1638. The story begins in Bermuda, many years before. Among the early Church of England ministers in that island were two Scots, George Stirk and Patrick Copland. The latter was the much-travelled Aberdonian whom the Virginia Company had appointed Rector of their proposed Indian College at Henrico. When a trading vessel left Massachusetts for Bermuda in December 1638, Hugh Peter gave the shipmaster a letter of introduction to Patrick Copland.2 It is probable that the cargo of this ship included Indian slaves, captives of the Pequot War; for Master Copland wrote to Governor Winthrop a year later thanking him for his 'remembrance' in sending ' 12 New-England Indians,' and offering to civilize and convert any more that he might send, 'so they be hopefull.' His colleague Master Stirk had died (Copland observed), leaving ' a hopefull sonne of his owne name, who is reasonable well entred in the Latine tongue. If there be any good schole and schole maister with you, I could wish with all my heart that hee might have his education rather with you, then in old England.' 3 1. Memorandum of December, 1653; F. H. C., p. 449. For further details on this episode, and on Bermudian relations to Harvard, see S. E. Morison, 'The Eleuthera DonationHarvard Alumni Bulletin, x x x n (1930). 1067-72; G. L. Kittredge, 'George Stirk,' C. S. M., xiii. 16-59; 2 Proc. Μ. H. S., XIII. 1 1 - 1 5 , 5 I - S 2 · 2. F. H. С., pp. 129 п., 346,413-14· 3. 5 Coll. Μ. Η. S., ι. 277-79.

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HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

When Governor Winthrop received this letter, in July 1640, he could have replied, and doubtless did, that Harvard College was just the place for young Stirk. Certainly the College was so well advertised in the Bermudas that Stirk entered in 1643, together with Nathaniel White, Jr., son of the elder Stirk's successor as Rector of Southampton Tribe Parish. The two boys took adjoining studies in the Long Chamber: White had the 'west study with the fire,' and Stirk the 'middle west study.' No doubt White's fire was appreciated by both Bermudians during the New England winter. In Bermuda these were troublous times. Nathaniel White and Patrick Copland renounced their Anglican orders in 1644, and together with Stephen Painter, maternal grandfather of George Stirk, formed a Congregational church. In 1649 there was a royalist uprising in the Islands, and Governor Trimingham gave White and his congregation the choice of conforming to the Church of England or leaving Bermuda. They chose exile, and in the autumn of that year joined a new puritan plantation on the island of Eleuthera in the Bahamas. 1 Two years before, the aged Copland with several parishioners of Master White had set forth under Captain William Sayle to plant this colony. Their experiences are related in the Journal of Governor Winthrop, who always watched with keen and not altogether friendly interest the progress of puritan establishments outside New England, which he considered the proper Canaan for 'God's people.' From his point of view the experiences of this group in Eleuthera pointed a deep moral. Like Rhode Island they adopted religious liberty as the basis of their polity; and as a natural consequence one Captain Butler raised a faction and made himself so unpleasant that the rest removed to another island. Their ship was cast away, and 'all their provisions and goods were lost, so as they were forced (for divers months) to lie in the open air, and feed upon such fruits and wild creatures as the island afforded.' 2 In despair Captain Sayle embarked in a shallop with eight men to 1. J . H. Lefroy, Memorials oj the Bermudas (1879), index under Nathaniel White; Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (1934), pp. 230-33. 2. Winthrop, Journal (1908 ed.), п. 352. This account has sometimes been confused with the history of White's company, which gave the Harvard donation. But White was still in Bermuda October 25,1649 (Lefroy, op. cit., 1. 655 п.), and Winthrop — who

' T O INLARGE OUR ROOM'

41

seek relief wheresoever Providence might take them. B y good fortune, nine days' sailing took them to a part of Virginia where there was a puritan community, which furnished them with provisions and a vessel. This story was known in Boston before the end of 1648. T h e following summer, the two Bermudian students commenced Master of Arts at Harvard. It seemed inadvisable to return to their native island, where conditions were so unsettled. George Stirk had filled up the interval between his two degrees practising medicine; and later it was suspected that for all the prayers of the Reverend Mr. Copland and the grave counsel of the worshipful Mr. Winthrop, George served the devil more faithfully than he did God. B u t that was after he had left New England, and become a chemist. T h e second supply of settlers for Eleuthera, including the elder Nathaniel White and such parishioners as preferred exile to conformity, had sailed from Bermuda by early November 1649. W h a t accident befell them is not known; but word reached Boston that White's colonists, like Sayle's the year before, were in need of succor. Accordingly, the churches in the B a y Colony collected several hundred pounds' worth of provisions and other necessaries, which were shipped in a small vessel chartered for that purpose. 1 She sailed from Boston on M a y 13, 1650, with Nathaniel White, Jr. as supercargo, and arrived at Eleuthera on June 17. 2 T h e good people of Eleuthera, wishing, as they said, to express their gratitude to God and to 'avoid that foule sin of ingratitude so abhorred of God, so hatefull to all men,' sent in return ten tons of Brazil-wood, a valuable dyewood which they had doubtless felled themselves, and the net proceeds of which they desired to be given to Harvard College. T h e vessel sailed from Eleuthera in July 1650, and arrived at Boston on August 6, bringing as passengers Nathaniel White, Jr., a sister of George Stirk, and the aged Stephen Painter. 3 A very long letter, which died March 26, 1649 — records the above incident in his 'Journal for 1648. He received the account from Virginia puritans. ι . Edward Johnson, W. W. P . (1910 ed.), p. 267. 2. Sibley, I. 139. Details in Dunster's ms. Notebook, Μ . H. S. The story is corroborated in a letter from Bermuda dated September 7, 1650 (Lefroy, op. cit., 11. 9), which valued the Bay contribution between £600 and £700. 3. Ms. note in hand of Increase Mather at end of the Eleuthera letter in the Dunster Notebook, p. 131, at the Μ . H . S.

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HISTORY OF H A R V A R D UNIVERSITY

President D u n s t e r caused to be copied into his notebook b y Jonathan Ince, senior sophister, accompanied the Brazil-wood. A f t e r several pages of pious ejaculations, biblical references, expressions of gratitude, and general sermonizing, the writers come to the point: Wee with others that received of your grace, have sent (as a pledge of our thankfulness to God and your selves) by the hands of your faythful messengers Mr. James Pen 1 and Mr. Abraham Palmore * produced by you honord by us (and justly they having jeoparded their lives for our sakes, whose labour of Love wee have gratefully acknowledged, but left unto Jesus Christ to bee recompensed) a Moitie of that grace bestowed on us, viz ten Tuns of Brasiletto wood to bee disposed of by them (with your approbation) as a stock for your Colledges use (reserving so much of it as the ships charges surmounteth the summe designed for that purpose) not that wee would hereby detract from your Care of it but that wee may expresse how sensible wee are of Gods love and tender Care of us manifested in yours; and avoid that foule sin of ingratitude so abhorred of God, so hatefull to all men. Lett us find grace in your eyes, . . . most earnestly desiring the Continence of the fellowship of mutuall prayers wee take leave and rest Your affectionately loveing though unworthy Brethren Cyguatea 17 (5) 1650 verum Exempler per

me

JONATHAN INCE

WILLIAM SAYLE NATH WHITE ROBERT RIDLEY i n

the

name of the Church

T h e college records tell us the exact sum realized b y the sale of the Brazil-wood. In Treasurer D a n f o r t h ' s list of donations we find t h a t ' T h e Inhabitans of o u t of their p o v e r t y g a v e to H a r v a r d Colledge O n e hundred and t w e n t y four pound.' 3 E v i d e n t l y the name Eleuthera, with its m a n y aliases, w a s too much for Treasurer D a n f o r t h ; b u t not for T u t o r F l y n t , w h o in his list of college benefactions w r o t e : Incolae et Plantatores Insulse Segoteae sive Eleutherise, in testimonium gratitudinis erga Massachusetenses pro Necessariis in Ex1. James Penn, who came over with Winthrop, was ruling elder of the First Church in Boston, and later a benefactor of the College. 2. Abraham Palmer of Charlestown, an original member of the Massachusetts Bay Company and a merchant. 3. C. S- Μ, XV. 200.

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43

trema illorum indigentia transmissis Subsidies, Collegio Designarunt £124.' This was the largest single donation the College had yet received, excepting the 'Country's G i f t ' and John Harvard's legacy. Nathaniel White, Jr., who accompanied the Brazilwood consignment, was doubtless responsible. Harvard graduates have a way of diverting any benefactions that may be floating about into the ever empty coffers of alma mater. Master White now resumed his residence in college, aided by a £6 exhibition 2 — the unique instance in our records of a scholarship grant to a resident M.A. not engaged in teaching. No doubt the young man was needy and deserving; but the suggestion of a quid pro quo is too strong to be overlooked. G O F F E COLLEGE

The Eleuthera donors designated their gift 'as a stock,' i.e. ' a store or provision to be drawn upon as occasion requires.'3 The occasion was at hand. The Old College was overcrowded; Edward Goffe's house, lot, and cowyard (IV), adjoining the original College Yard to the westward, were in the market; and the Eleuthera donation came as a special providence for the purchase thereof. This acquisition rounded out the College Yard to a neat rectangle with about 180 feet frontage on Braintree Street, and provided another building, which was promptly remodelled into chambers and studies of academical pattern. The house was then renamed 'Goffe College.' Thus began a practice that lasted at Harvard until the nineteenth century, of calling each separate building a 'college.' Burgis' view of 1726 is Ά Prospect of the Colledges at Cambridge,' and even within the memory of persons now living one spoke o f ' the colleges' rather than ' the buildings' at Harvard. 4 The same practice was adopted at Yale, where it has recently been revived for the new residential units. Many New England institutions, such as Bowdoin, Amherst, and Williams, as 1. Copy from the lost Flynt's Account of Benefactions, in Eliot's ms. Donations Book, H. U. Archives. The wood was probably shipped to London and disposed of there. 2. C. S. M., xv. 180, confirmed by Chesholme's accounts, C. S. M., x x x i . 293. 3. N.E.D., 'Stock,' si. 55. 4. Albert Matthews, in C. S. M., xv. p. cxxviii ff.

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY well as Princeton and Western Reserve Academy in Ohio, still have their 'Middle College,' 'South College,' and the like. No English precedent is found for this use of the word.1 Did it spring up spontaneously, in common usage; or was 'Goffe College' a bit of grandiloquence, adopted to make Harvard appear to be a university of colleges? Harvard students of the 1650's appear to have shared with their successors a keen desire to live in the newest building. As soon as Goffe was fitted up with chambers and studies, in the quarter ending June 16, 1652, an exodus began to the new 'colledge.' At least eleven students, in Steward Chesholme's accounts, were debited with £ 3 or £4 income for a 'new study in the new house' at that time.2 The college inventory of December 10, 1654, lists a 'house called Goffes Colledge . . . conteyning five Chambers. 18 Studyes, a Kitchen Cellar and 3 garretts'; 3 and a new list of chambers and studies drawn up late in 1655 4 mentions 'The great Chamber studyes in Mr. Goffes house,' renting at $s a quarter; ' M r [Urian] Oakes and his brother [Edward's] chamber and studyes,' and ' M r [John] Whiting and Mr [Samuel] Hookers chamber and studyes,' each renting at 6s 6d per quarter; a 'chamber and study over Mr Oakes chamber in Mr Goffes house,' renting at 4J; ' Garret studyes'; and 'the lowest chamber studyes west within Mr Goffes house,' renting at is 6d each per quarter. From these particulars, one infers that Goffe College was of the larger and better sort of dwelling house of that period, clustered about a central chimney, solidly built of timber, steeproofed and gabled. On the ground or first floor there was an entry with the staircase, a hall which was altered into the 'Great Chamber,' another chamber, an ell or lean-to containi. It is true that in England the word was used for 'the building or set of buildings occupied b y ' a collegiate institution (Ν. E. D., 'College' 5); but never, where there was more than one building in a college, was the term applied to each separate building. Thus, at Emmanuel, the original structure taken over from the friars and remodelled by Mildmay was doubtless called Emmanuel College, but when a new detached range of living quarters was erected in 1633-34 it was called the ' Brick Building.' 1. C. S. M., x x x i . 34, 55, 68, 78, 88, etc. John Fownall appears to have been the pioneer; he is debited with 'the Income of Study In Ed goffes east Chamber beinge the south study' at the December quarter, 1651, id. 1 1 8 . For the meaning of 'income,' see F. H. C., p. 282. 3. C. S. M., xv. 208. 4. Id. 19. Dated by internal evidence, and by the fact that Chesholme's Steward's accounts show that study rents were raised for the Class of 1659 between September and December 1655.

'TO

INLARGE

OUR

ROOM'

45

ing the kitchen, with an undesirable 'lowest chamber' tucked in somewhere, two chambers 1 on the second story, and above that three gabled garrets, in each of which a study was contrived.2 Samuel Sewall of the Class of 1671 recorded in his diary four years after graduation a dream in which 'Goff Colledge' figured; 3 hence we may assume that the building was still standing in his time. But there is no allusion to it in later descriptions and inventories of Harvard College. Goffe College must have been burned, taken down, or in some way disposed of before 1677, when Old Harvard Hall was ready for occupancy. Before the inventory of 1654 was taken the College acquired, whether by gift or purchase is not known,4 the site of Holyoke House. This was the house lot of Robert Bradish, opposite the Peyntree (I) and Goffe (IV) lots, with about 1 1 5 feet frontage on Braintree Street, and 89 feet on Crooked Lane (Holyoke Street). It was here that Goody Bradish was wont to dispense those ' comfortable pennyworths' of bread and beer which had received presidential approval.5 We may hope that this excellent woman was allowed to continue her useful calling rent-free until her death in 167a; for the college records show no rent received from the property until 1705, when Andrew Bordman, the second college cook and steward of that name, leased it for a few shillings. B y that time the house had disappeared, and the Bordmans used the lot for a garden or pasture, building their barn over the southwest corner. In 1775 President Langdon released that corner, with a narrow strip, to Bordman's grandson, retaining the rest for a presidential garden.6 Finally, in 1871, the College covered the lot with Holyoke House.' I. The Whiting-Hooker chamber, and the one over Oakes's. 4. Allowing three studies to each of the five chambers, and one in each garret, the eighteen studies in the inventory would be accounted for.

3. Diary, ι. 10.

4. Possibly purchased with a part of the Eleuthera donation. 5. See Chapter IV. M y Roman numerals refer to the map in F. H. C., p. 192. 6. C. S. M., xv. 208, 266, 3 0 2 - 0 3 , 3 7 3 . President Langdon's plan of it faces p. 270. About 20 feet along its eastern edge were relinquished by the College in 1800 in order to straighten and widen Holyoke Street. 7. President's Report, 1870-71, p. 40.

φ

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY OVERFLOW CHAMBERS AND

STUDIES

The Old College and Goffe do not exhaust the accommodations for students in the crowded 1650's. A President's Lodging had been built for Dunster by the General Court in 1645-46, on or very near the site of the Peyntree House.1 There were two studies in the 'Printinge roome' on the ground floor of the Lodging, a study in ' the Chamber ouer the Printing roome,' and a 'new study in the pentinary,' 2 a word unknown alike to Harvard inventories and English dictionaries. President Chauncy, who did not share his predecessor's taste for printer's ink, complained of the printing press as inconvenient, 'dangerous and hurtful'; 3 and it seems to have been removed shortly either to a new 'Print-house' or to the Indian College. This building, the first at Harvard to be constructed in brick, was erected in 1655-56; and, in all probability, on the Goffe lot.4 So, by 1656, Harvard had a group of four buildings in close proximity, like those of an English college. On the highway were the President's Lodging and Goffe College. Behind the Lodging was the Old College; and the quadrangle was completed by the Indian College. As it had chambers and studies for twenty students, and no Indian scholars (or almost none) after 1665, the Indian College was probably used in preference to the more draughty and dilapidated parts of the Old College. In the 1655 list of studies, 'The least study a loft in that which was the schoolehouse'5 is not easily identified. The first recorded home of the Cambridge Latin School, a stone building erected under Dunster's direction in 1647-48 (and partly at his expense) on the westerly side of Holyoke Street, was not superseded until 1669.6 Probably 'that which was the schoolehouse' refers to some earlier building used before 1648. One of the first reforms adopted by President Chauncy was to abolish ' income' and establish a new and higher schedule of ι. 2. could 3. 4. 5. 6.

F. H. C., pp. 345, 346. C.S.M., xxxi. 129. I suspect it to be the nearest that Deacon Chesholme get to dog-Latin pentinarius, for one of the lean-tos adjoining the Lodge. Appendix A , doc. 6. The Indian College is more particularly described in Chapter X V I I . C. S. M., xv. 19. Paige, pp. 370-73; no. 14 on Map of Cambridge in F. H. C., p. 192.

'TO INLARGE OUR ROOM'

47

quarterly study rents.1 The students then in college, who had paid income under Dunster, received nothing back; it was they who really paid for the studies. This rather unjust settlement of an irksome business was resented in some quarters. George Bunker of Charlestown, a benefactor of the College, had a son Benjamin who graduated in 1658, and was therefore one of those left 'holding the bag.' In the inventory of the elder Bunker's estate, recorded in 1666, we find the item 'One Study at the Colledg.' 2 Mr. Bunker evidently felt that he owned Ben's study until someone paid him back for it. T H E BETTS L O T AND MEETINGHOUSE

Frequently in the course of this history we shall have reason to bewail the lack of foresight or generosity in our founders in providing the College with so little land. In comparison with the 10,000 acres promised to the Virginia College, and the 300-acre lot offered by Salem to our first Board of Overseers, the five or six acres owned by or 'intended for' Harvard College at the opening of Chauncy's administration were ridiculously inadequate; and for every enlargement the College or her benefactors have had to pay through the nose. One such opportunity for Cambridge landowners came in 1660. William Paine, merchant of Ipswich, gave 'unto the Colledg at Cambridge the some of Twenty pounds The which is . . . not to be expended, But to remaine as a stock to the Colledge aforesaid for ever.' 3 Despite this prohibition, the Corporation promptly laid out Paine's gift, and more,4 in purchasing from John Betts the westernmost of the original lots in Cowyard Row (V), an acre and a rood between the Goffe lot (IV) and the Common, just north of the meetinghouse.5 This new acquisition extended ι . C. S. M., x x x i . 332; below, Chapter X V I . Ν. Ε. H. G. R., LXH. 68. 3. Suffolk Probate Records, i. 347. 4. John Paine, the benefactor's son, seems to have given an additional £10. C. S. M., xv. 200, 214, 265. J. See facsimile of deed, 24 April 1661 (H. U. Archives, 1. i j . 300F). The lot included no buildings, Betts having a house-lot elsewhere in Cambridge; and £30 was a stiff price for that period. Cf. C. S. M., xv. 198, where Paine's will is misrepresented, and p. 256, where 'pains p f ' should read 'pains g[i]f[t].' The Betts lot, as bounded in 1642 (Cambridge Proprietors' Records, p. 108), went no further north than the other cowyards. Its northerly abutter was the 'land intended for the Colledge' 2.

48

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y

far enough north to take in the site of Harvard Hall, and give opportunity for reorientating the college buildings toward the close of the century. In Cambridge Meetinghouse, at the southwestern corner of the present Y a r d , the College had an interest. Like most of the Oxford and Cambridge colleges in their early days, Harvard had no chapel of her own. 1 A s in the medieval universities, it would have caused hard feeling between town and gown, as well as unnecessary expense, if the College had withdrawn from the town parish; the puritans, moreover, believed that the Almighty was not particular about places of worship, provided they were decent. Harvard students said morning and evening prayers every weekday in their own college hall, and twice every Lord's D a y attended Cambridge meeting in a body. Until after Thomas Shepard's death, the First Church in Cambridge occupied the original Hooker meetinghouse at the corner of Dunster and Mount Auburn Streets. In 1650 a new meetinghouse 40 foot square and roofed with cedar shingle was built on Watch-House Hill, in what is now the southwest corner of the Y a r d ; 2 in it the College built the east gallery for her students' use.3 T h e cost, £30, was financed by a forced loan on the students of 15J a head; in most cases, but not all, lis of this sum was credited when a graduate squared his final accounts. 4 T h e Laws of 1655 substituted for this system a fixed charge of 3J 'for the use of the sayd Gallery at their admission which they shall bee Charged withall without any repayment.' 5 Commencement exercises were held in this meetinghouse toward the close of the century; but as long as the Old College stood, Commencement was celebrated in the college hall.6 Harvard College, then, seems to have been well provided with buildings within a few years of her foundation. Through the (II, the town grant to Eaton in 1638). B y 1661, Betts had encroached on lot II by annexing what Sweetman had left of its frontage on the Common; Betts's northerly abutter was Sweetman, whose lot (VI) was acquired by the College in 1697.

1. Willis and Clark, Architect. Hist. Univ. Cambridge, in. 484-85,496-97. 2. Paige, p. 259. The hill, which was merely a small knoll, was probably levelled at that time. A third meetinghouse was built on or near the same site in 1706. This stood until 1756. 3. C. S. M., xv. p. cxxii. 4. Chesholme (С. S. M., xxxi),passim. The student's seat in the gallery is called his 'Gallery room' here and in C. S. M., x v . 210. 5. C. S. M., x x x i . 332. 6. C. S. Μ., XVIII. 375-76.

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'TO INLARGE OUR ROOM'

49

generosity of benefactors and the energy of Dunster and his governing boards, facilities were promptly provided for that ' Collegiate Way of Living' which the founders had enjoyed in Old England, and were determined to perpetuate in New England. How easy it would have been to have done otherwise; to have lodged and boarded the students with the townspeople, used Cambridge Meetinghouse for lectures, and let the college social life take care of itself! But the founders of Harvard College were not content with a cheap substitute. ' I t is wel known to your selves,' wrote the Governing Boards to a group of English university men in 1671, 'what advantage to Learning accrue's by the multitude of persons cohabiting for Scholasticall communion, whereby to acuate the minds of one another, and other waies to promove the ends of a Colledge-Society.' 1 They had no apologies for laying out large sums on college buildings, that young men might 'cohabit' as members of the same collegiate community, learning from each other and their elders the discipline that makes useful citizens and wise statemen. This 'chamber-fellowship' established in the Old College of 1642, although shorn of its supervising Dominus, has been one of the most persistent of Harvard traditions; 2 and dining in common, after fading out almost completely, has been revived in the new residential houses. So it was not extravagance, but necessity, that provided annexes to the Old College, thought by some to be ' too gorgeous for a Wilderness.' Presidents Dunster and Chauncy and their governing boards and graduates must have successfully impressed New England with their own set of values; for when the Old College fell into a premature decay, the community gave generously to provide a new brick building, Old Harvard Hall.3 I. C.S. Μ., XI. 339-40. 1. Although long since abandoned in the English colleges whence it came, 'chumming' (as it used to be called), or 'rooming together' (as it is now called) in groups of two to five, is still practised by the great majority of Harvard undergraduates. T h e word ' c h u m ' was in current use at Harvard in the last century, but in my time (190508) it was considered rather old-fashioned; and when your father asked after your chum, you replied, ' M y roommate is all right.' Chumming declined at the English Cambridge in the eighteenth century (Peacock, Observations on the Statutes, p. 69, n. 2), and we find the Fellows of Wadham College, Oxford, complaining in 1773 that as students refused any longer to chum the College had to fit up garrets to accommodate the overflow. T . G . Jackson, Wadham College, p. 137. 3. See Chapters X V I and X X .

IV THE COLLEGE ORGANIZATION In organizing and directing the College committed to his charge, President Dunster showed no less genius than in the framework and 'fundamentals' of the institution; and his purpose to maintain the cultural standards and practices of the mother country was no less evident. We have already studied the skeleton organization provided for the College by the Charter of 1650. There were two Governing Boards: a Corporation consisting of President, five Fellows, and a Treasurer; and the Board of Overseers as organized under the Act of 1642, consisting of the Assistants or Magistrates of Massachusetts Bay, the ministers of Cambridge and five adjacent towns, and the President of the College. The five fellowships, as we have seen, did not work out as Dunster had planned, or as the Charter assumed. Had the money been available, each fellow would have received a stipend, three or four would have taught, and the others prosecuted their own studies, like the fellows of English colleges. But the College Corn and other voluntary contributions provided meagre stipends, barely covering board and lodging for two and occasionally three tutors.1 The other fellowships were held without stipend by former tutors who had become ministers, or else conferred (merely to keep the Corporation full) on middle-aged ministers of the vicinity. Hence the teaching staff, throughout the century, consisted of the President 2 and two 1. For a few months in 1654-55 President Chauncy apparently succeeded in keeping together four teaching fellows. Nicholas Sever, in a memorial dated October 17, 1721, copied the record of a joint meeting of both Governing Boards on March 19, 1654/55, from College Book II, which was burnt in 1764. He reports that four fellows, " M r . Dudley, Sir Shepard, Sir Hooker, and Sir Ambrose," were present. The last three had been elected on November 27, 1654, when Chauncy was inaugurated (C. S. M., xv. 207), and presumably all four, being recent graduates, were teaching (Harvard College Papers, H. U. Archives, 1. 134). 2. I assume that the presidents before 1685, when an era of non-resident presidents began, did a certain amount of lecturing, but have found no direct evidence that any

COLLEGE

ORGANIZATION

51

or three 1 tutors, teaching fellows, or 'Fellows of the House' as they were often called at a later period.2 FELLOWS OF THE HOUSE

From 1643 on, each tutor took charge of one or more classes of students, and, if he remained long enough, saw them through the entire undergraduate curriculum. In February 1654, for instance, Michael Wigglesworth's complex of 'unbeleeving discouragement joyn'd with pride' in reference to his pupils, which occasioned him so much mental agony, caused him to wonder whether he should not give up 'one classis at least'; but he resolved 'against it by god's grace.' 3 Previous to 1685 it was very seldom that Harvard students had the same tutor for four years, since only six or seven of the forty-one fellows before that date 4 taught for over three years. The typical tutor of the seventeenth century was a very young man, appointed to a fellowship shortly after taking his Bachelor's degree. He was a candidate for the ministry, and resigned his tutorship as soon as a ministerial opening appeared, or whenever the lure of a chaplaincy in the New Model Army or other overseas adventure drew him back to the old country. President Dunster's notion of the proper stipend for a teaching fellow rose from £16 in 1647 to £20 in 1653; s but there is no evidence that anyone in his day received as much. In the records of his administration, we find tutors being paid at the rate of £8, £10, and £12 a year. 6 Under Chauncy the Fellows of the House received, in addition to a moderate salary, the after Dunster did so regularly. At an Overseers' meeting on March 27, 1667, the Treasurer was ordered to pay President Chauncy 'one fourth Sallary of A Fellowship, for his Extraordinary pains in the want of Fellows.' (Nicholas Sever's extracts from College Book II, in H. C. Papers, H. U. Archives, 1. 136.) It is not clear why the President was so put to it, since there were two Fellows of the House and not more than thirty undergraduates in college at that time. 1. A third tutor did not become permanent until 1699, and a fourth tutor until 1720. C. S. M., xv. 363; xvi. 449. 2. C. S. M., xv. pp. cxxxiv, cxxxv, 382,401. 3. Ms. Diary, Μ. H. S., Feb. 27, 1653/54. 4. List in C. S. M., xv. pp. clviii-clix. I include those appointed tutors previous to the Charter of 1650. For the correct dates of the first five fellows, see above, pp. 27-30. 5. Petition to New England Confederation, in Plym. Col. Rees., ix. 95; F. H. C., p. 449. 6. C. S. M., xv. 180; x x x i . 273-74. Eaton received £24 for his last two years as senior fellow.

52

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

former presidential perquisites of tuition fees and Charlestown ferry rent. Thomas Graves, the Senior Fellow, seems to have been taking in about £ 2 3 per annum in 1669, 1 when the Piscataqua Benevolence brought him £ 1 6 more.2 But his board and probably his lodging had to come out of this.3 Toward the close of the century, when the House had accumulated a modest endowment, with no president to maintain, Harvard College fellowships became distinctly worth while. John Leverett and William Brattle, who formed the teaching staff from 1685 to 1697, received over £ 1 2 5 a year apiece from salary, tuition fees, and rents.4 The employment of young graduates as tutors was a return to the system of B.A. lecturers and regent-masters by which the medieval universities were conducted-5 As in the Middle Ages, it was assumed that any bright student, as soon as he had taken a degree, was ready to teach all subjects leading to that degree. And there is such a close resemblance to the 'rotating regency' of the Scottish universities 6 that the report of a Royal Commission on that system a century ago applies equally well to colonial Harvard: During the whole of that century, not only at Glasgow but in other Universities, the Regents or Teachers of Philosophy (with very few exceptions) were young men who had recently finished their Academical studies, and who were destined for the Church. . . . The Universities had the advantage of their services during the vigour of life, when they were unencumbered by domestic cares, and when they felt how much their reputation and interest depended on the exertions which they made. After serving a few years (seldom more than eight or less than four), they generally obtained appointments in the 1. From rather fragmentary entries in Treasurer Richards's Accounts, H. U. Archives, fol. 4 , 1 infer that Graves got £5 4J for half a year's salary, and that the three teaching fellows shared equally in the ferry rent, which amounted to £27 10s. Assuming that he had ten pupils paying 8s apiece, he obtained £23 lis ψ/ from these sources. 2. C. S. M., xv. 219; see Chapter XVIII. 3. Cf. the recommendation of the committee in Appendix A, doc. 2. Edward Randolph reported in 1676: 'There are but 4 fellowships, the two seniors have each 30/ per ann. and the two juniors 15/, but no diet is allowed* (R. N. Toppan, Edward Randolph, ι. 72). 4. C. S. M., xv. 79-81, 339, 341, 348, 357; xvi. 827-30. A computation by the discontented tutors c. 1721 (Harvard College Papers, 1. 125) of what their predecessors had from 1694 to 1701 arrives at £126, made up as follows: £25 salary, £25 ferry rents, £20 Pennoyer rents, £56 average tuition money. 5. F. H. C., pp. 20-21. 6. Id. 137.

COLLEGE ORGANIZATION

53

Church, and thus transferred to another field the intellectual industry and aptitude for communicating knowledge, by which they had distinguished themselves in the University.1 If these early Harvard tutors enjoyed less knowledge than their successors on the several faculties today, they had more responsibility. Tutors were with their pupils almost every hour of the day, and slept in the same chamber with some of them at night. They were responsible not only for the intellectual, but for the moral and spiritual development of their charges. None are known to have proved unworthy of their trust; in many instances the relation of tutor and pupil became a lifelong friendship; and for these 'choice young men' the tutorial function was an admirable training for the pastoral office in which most of them were destined to pass the remainder of their lives. C O L L E G E OFFICERS AND SERVANTS

Under the Governing Boards there was a small hierarchy of college officers, whose duties were prescribed by orders promulgated by President and Overseers on March 28, 1650. The most important was the Procurator or Steward, who inherited the weighty duties of college and manorial stewards in England.4 Whilst the Treasurer cared for college funds and property outside the Yard, the Steward was domestic bursar, caterer, and major-domo. The Steward kept all the college accounts, excepting the detailed day-book for students' commons and sizings, which the cook and butler jotted down. He received income from the Treasurer and collected payments due from the students; and as most of these payments were in kind,3 the Steward had to be on the alert lest his quick assets become dead, like the Watertown goat.4 He delivered provisions to the butler and cook and malt to the brewer, requiring him to make a barrel of beer to a peck of malt; wheat to the baker, seeing to it that 1. Report Made to His Majesty by a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the State of the Universities of Scotland (1831), p. 221, A Parliamentary visitation of 1690 required that the regent-masters of the Scottish universities should be at least twenty-one years of age {id. 222). 2. Most English colleges still have a Steward, a position often filled by retired army officers. A t Harvard the name of the office was changed to Bursar in 1874. 3. For examples, see Chapter V . 4. C. S. M., x v . 18.

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HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

he made seventy loaves from every bushel of wheat, and that the weight of the loaf was proportioned to the price of wheat, according to the colonial assize of bread. He was not to allow students to order 'extraordinary Commons' except by permission of the President and two fellows, or ' intemperately to abuse their liberty of Sizing'—to consume overmuch beer — or to run more than £2 in debt to the College; but he sometimes lent money to students,1 and often paid their accounts with laundresses and Cambridge tradespeople. He paid salaries and scholarships,2 as well as all bills for provisions, repairs, and damages. Hence the extant book of Steward's accounts from 1650 to 1660 is the most valuable source we have on the material life of the College. An incompetent Steward could easily have ruined the College in its first critical years; it was fortunate that the early Presidents were able to secure men of integrity and good business judgment to exercise this office. Matthew Day the printer, son of Stephen Day, is the first Steward of whom we have record.3 He was shortly succeeded by Thomas Chesholme, to whom every college historian is deeply indebted for careful and unconsciously humorous accounts. Goodman Chesholme, a tailor by trade, came over with Thomas Shepard, served as deacon of Cambridge Church, kept a tavern at his house on the corner of Dunster and Winthrop Streets,4 and took in select boarders, such as the two sons of John Winthrop the younger.5 Two short and undistinguished stewardships followed Chesholme's; but in 1668 the importance and dignity of the office were emphasized by Thomas Danforth's taking it in exchange for the college treasureship, when he was already a 'worshipful Magistrate' of the Bay; his college stewardship continued even when he became President of the Province of Maine, Deputy-Governor of Massachusetts, and President of the Commissioners of the United Colonies. To Danforth there succeeded a procuratorial dynasty of Bordmans, who filled the office in succession until 1750.15 ι . C.S.M., x x x i . 122, 124, 129. 2. Overseers' orders, 1667, respecting duties of Steward, butler, and cook (C. S. M., xv. 45-46, 201-02). After 1654 the Treasurer, not the Steward, paid fellows' stipends. The Steward's salary was £20 per annum, to 1660. 3. See F.H.C., pp. 291, 347-48. 4. No. 38 on the Map of Cambridge, in F. H. C., p. 192. 5. Paige, pp. 509-10, and Proc. Μ. H. S., v. 156; 6 Coll. Μ. H. S., 111.424. 6. The Bordmans were from Cambridge in England; Andrew Bordman, treasurer of the borough (Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, in. 103), had a son William who founded

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ORGANIZATION

55

T h e butler, who was usually a sober undergraduate somewhat older than his fellows, managed the buttery, whence beer and bevers were dispensed; the cook had charge of the kitchen; and between them they were responsible for daily setting and keeping ' in order, cleane and sweet from all manner of noysomness and nastiness and sensible Offensiveness' the public rooms and offices of the Old College. T h e y must keep undergraduates out of the buttery and kitchen; they were accountable for all the 'Colledge vessels and utensils great and smal delivered by Inventory unto them and once every Quarter to deliver in unto the Praesident in writing an Inventory thereof.' 1 Steward, cook, and butler were college officers; their inferiors, such as the brewer, baker, 2 cook's assistants, and bed-makers, were college servants, whose duties were set by direction, not by statute. Officers' salaries and servants' wages were paid out of the receipts from students for commons and sizings, at least as late as 1655. 3 I n addition to these, there were a number of Cambridge artisans who worked occasionally for the College, and were designated in the records as college smith, bricklayer, carpenter, glazier, and the like. It was a proud distinction in those days for any goodman or goodwife to be one of the college servants; 4 their successors are no less devoted and faithful, but prefer to be called employes. the New England family. He came over with his mother, who after his father's death had married Stephen Day, the printer. William Bordman (1616-1685) was a tailor; he served as college cook during a large part of Chesholme's stewardship, and as Steward for a few years previous to 1667, when he resigned owing to repeated complaints (C. S. M., xv. 218), but held the office of cook until 1685. Of his two sons, Andrew the first (1646-1687), tailor, succeeded him as cook and Danforth as Steward; Aaron (16491703), locksmith, succeeded Andrew as cook and Steward in 1687. Andrew the second (1670-1747), saddler, son of Andrew the first, assisted his uncle Aaron, succeeded him as cook and Steward in 1703, and held both offices forty-four years, until death. His sister Ruth married President Wadsworth. Andrew the second's son Andrew the third (1701-1769, A.B. 1719), who married the daughter of Lieut.-Gov. Spencer Phips, served as Steward from 1747 to 1750. C. S. M., xv. p. clxi; Paige, pp. 490-91; Proc. Μ. H. S., v. 154-58; G. A. Moriarty, Jr., in Λ^. Ε. Η. G. R., lxxvii. 305-12; Ms. account book of Andrew II owned by Mr. George R. Harlow of Cleveland. 1. Overseers' Orders of 1650 and 1667, in C. S. M., xv. 33,46, 203. 2. I do not think that the brewer and baker lasted long; they are not mentioned in the Orders of 1667. 3. So one infers from the'Briefe Information' of 1655 (Appendix A, doc. 6), and the absence of any other evidence of the source of these payments. 4. John Taylor, who was appointed butler about the year 1671, after serving as college carpenter since the early part of Dunster's administration, died in 1683. His epitaph describes him as 'a useful man in His Generation, a lover of Piety, a Lover of Learning, a faithful Servant of Harvard Colledg About 40 years.' (Sibley, n. 288.)

ζ6

HISTORY

OF H A R V A R D

UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC ' Q U A R T E R S ' AND Q U A R T E R L Y C H A R G E S

The academic year at Harvard, as in England, was divided into four terms; but these terms were called 'quarters,' and instead of having the gracious names of the old church festivals they were simply designated by number.1 Harvard 'quarters' were simply fiscal divisions, without the significance of Cambridge terms, or our modern half-years; for college kept continuously, and residence toward a degree was counted in years. A t the end of each quarter came 'quarter-day,' when the Steward, having made up his accounts, presented his quarterbills to the students, who must discharge them within a month, or 'be look'd on as not belonging to the College.' 2 From Chesholme's accounts, we find that these were the quarter-days from 1650 through 1659: Academic Year First 1649-50 . .December 1650-5X 1651-52 . .December ..December 1652-53 .. December 1653-54 . . December 1654-55 .. December 1655-56 .. December 1656-57 . December 1657-58 . December 1658-59

13 12 10 9 8 7 5 5 3

Second March 15 March 13 March 12 March 11 March 10 March 9 March 7 March 6 March 5 March 4

Third June 14 June 13 June 11 June 10 June 9 June 8 June 6 June 5 June 5 June 4

Fourth September September September September September September September September September September

13 12 10 9 8 7 5 5 3 4

Apparently the Steward, or whoever devised this system, endeavored to make each quarter an even thirteen weeks, and to bring quarter-day on a Friday, with the result that every year the quarter-days came one or two days earlier in the calendar. In 1657-59 quarter-day came as often as not on a Saturday, and the last date in our list was the Sabbath. Deacon Chesholme was becoming decidedly shaky on the calendar — no wonder he retired the next year! When our extant Steward's records begin again, in 1687, we find the same system prevailing; the result being that the first quarter-day fell on October 21 in 1687, on October 4 in 1700, and on September 9 in 1720. This ι. Quarter-bill Book of 1687-1720 (H. U. Archives); in Chesholme one finds 'winter quarter' or 'quarters' (C. S. M., xxxi. 114, 163). 2. C. S. Μ., XV. p. XX.

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57

did not appear to embarrass the college financiers, since the quarters were merely fiscal, not scholastic, units. It was not expected that they would coincide with Commencement, nor did they, except by accident. A t what point this retrogression of the equinoxes was arrested, I have not ascertained; but the College L a w s of 1 8 2 5 still speak of four quarters, and of the Steward's quarter-bills; it was in the L a w s of 1826 that three ' terms' and ' term bills' were definitely established. 1 T h e regular quarterly charges on the students were tuition, bed-making, study rent, commons and sizings, and detriments. T h e normal tuition fee was 6s Sä per quarter ( £ 1 6s annually) until 1654, when it was raised to 8 j ( £ 1 I 2 j annually). 2 T h e regular rate for bed-making in 1650 was a shilling per quarter; in 1 6 5 4 , possibly as the result of a strike by Goody Lemon, 3 otherwise known as 'Old M a r y , ' the rate was raised to υ ηά. Study r e n t 4 and commons and sizings varied according to the location of the study and the appetite, thirst, and purse of the individual student. There was no fixed and regular vacation until the last quarter of the century; but if a student went home for the whole or part of a quarter before taking his second degree, he was charged 5s 'discontinuance' or 'detrements.' These terms, which came over from old Cambridge, 5 were used interchangeably by Steward Chesholme; detriments properly 1. Laws of the University (1825), pp. 29-31; id. (1826) 28-31; but 'term' is used as a synonym for 'quarter' in The Laws of Harvard College (1798), p. 59, and in subsequent years through 1820. 2. Some students paid the 8j charge on the June quarter-day, 1654, and all did by the December quarter-day; the raise in tuition must therefore have been made while Dunster was still President. Cf. Committee's Report of May 3, 1654, Appendix A, doc. 2. 3. So called in the Steward's accounts. As a curious instance of the persistence of seventeenth-century tradition, the college bed-makers were still called 'goodies' (the old abbreviation for Goodwives) in 1920, although in general colonial usage the word was obsolete by 1700. As a result of the segregation of freshmen, the term has since been corrupted into 'biddies.' 4. See F. H. C., p. 283. 5. An undergraduate culprit at Trinity College, Cambridge, was ordered ' to discontinue for a quarter of a yeare' or until he brought testimonials of his 'reformation in life and manners.' Ms. Admonition Book, Trinity Muniments. The Master and Fellows of Emmanuel College on January 2, 1656/57 ordered sizars to pay 'three pence weekly for and towards the discharge of the publick detriments of the College.' Ms. Emmanuel Order Book, p. 66, Emmanuel Muniments. J . P. Mahaffy, noting use of this term at Trinity, Dublin, writes: 'Detriments is still the Cambridge term . . . and means the money paid for the wear and tear of the house ' (An Epoch in Irish History, p. 80 n). At Harvard, detriments always implied absence from commons or from college.

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HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

meant what we should call an 'overhead charge.' If a student went away for part of a term he was charged half tuition, study rent, and detriments; if he boarded and lodged outside the College (a practice exceptional in Dunster's administration but common in Chauncy's), he paid full tuition, detriments, and whatever sizings he consumed from the buttery. SENIORITY A N D CLASSIFICATION OF S T U D E N T S

In this pioneer academic community, as in the colleges and the courts of the Old World, each member from the President to the lowliest freshman had his distinct place and precedence — Seniority, it was called.1 In order of seniority, written in Gothic letters,3 the names were kept constantly posted on the ' buttery tables' —• tablets or bulletin boards which hung in a conspicuous place against the buttery wall. To have your name on the tables meant that you were a member of Harvard College; and to have your name 'cut out of the tables' or 'put out of the buttery' was the symbol of expulsion.3 The Harvard Order of Seniority was thus arranged: The President of Harvard College The Senior Fellow of the House Resident Masters of Arts, if former Fellow-Commoners or Knights' Sons Junior Fellows, Masters of Arts Other Resident Masters of Arts 1. See S. E. Morison, 'Precedence at Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century,' Proceedings Am. Antiq. Soc., n.s. XLII. 371-431, and published separately, to which the reader is referred for the facts and references upon which these conclusions are based. 2. The 'large German text' mentioned by Paine Wingate (A.B. 1759) in his classic account of seniority written in 1831 (Benjamin Peirce, History of Harvard Univ., p. 311). I suppose that the medieval style of lettering had been maintained as a tradition by successive stewards. Beginning with the Class of 1662, the Steward charged each entering freshman id for' wrytinge his name.' 3. For an instance, see Chapter VI. The college inventories of 1674,1683, and later mention a 'Butterie book' and '3 Tables to put names on.' Treasurer Richards's accounts for 1675 (fol. 34 v°.) mention a payment of 7s 'toward makeing the table for names in the Buttery.' For description of a buttery table, see Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, in. 96. One finds 'putt out of the Butry booke' in the records of New College, Oxford, for 1649, a n d 'names cutt out of the Buttery booke' in J. P. Mahaffy (ed.), The Particular Book of Trinity College, Dublin, p. 22a. The late Dean White of Christ Church used to enter the House buttery in academic costume and himself erase the name of an expelled student from the buttery book.

PASSAGE THROUGH THE S C R E E N S , ST. J O H N ' S CHRIST'S COLLEGES,

CAMBRIDGE

Showing Buttery Hatches and Buttery Tables

AND

COLLEGE ORGANIZATION

59

Junior Fellows, Bachelors of Arts Fellow-Commoners Senior Bachelors Middle Bachelors Junior Bachelors Senior Sophisters Junior Sophisters Sophomores Freshmen Seniority was not only fixed between one class and another, but within each class. Thus, a senior bachelor outranked a middle bachelor; and a middle bachelor who graduated first in his class outranked one who had graduated second. So far, this was strictly in accordance with English practice. But among the undergraduates, one finds a very different system of seniority from the English one. Harvard never had more than two or three orders (or vertical classes, we might call them) of undergraduates: fellowcommoners, ordinary students, and possibly sizars. Fellowcommoners are mentioned in the College Laws of 1642-46, but their status and privileges were first defined in President Chauncy's code of 1655.1 Alone of undergraduates they were addressed and recorded as 'Mr.' They paid extra tuition,* presented the College with a piece of plate valued at £3 or more, dined at the fellows' table, outranked all other undergraduates (even resident bachelors), and stood at the head of their respective classes in the catalogue of graduates. ι . F. H. C., p. 336; C. S. M., x x x i . 3 3 1 . The following list of fellow-commoners is extracted from the Harvard records: Before 1650: Thomas Langham, ' M r . Ven,' Richard Harris. After 1650: Samuel Willis, A.B. 1653 Edward Paige, before 1683 Charles Brooke, Class of 1655 Francis Wainwright, A.B. 1686 Richard Bennett, Class of 1659 John Winthrop, A.B. 1700 Nathaniel Saltonstall, A.B. 1659 Samuel Browne, A.B. 1727 Wait Winthrop, Class of 1662 John Vassall, A.B. 173a Joseph Browne, A.B. 1666 William Vassall, A.B. 1733 Edward Pelham, A.B. 1673 George Ball, A.B. 1734 2. The only two fellow-commoners of Dunster's time in the Steward's book, Samuel Willis and Charles Brooke, paid double tuition (13.Γ 4 J ) each quarter; but the two later ones, Nathaniel Saltonstall and Richard Bennett of the Class of 1659, who entered under Chauncy, paid but 5s freshman year, and then 10s, as recommended by the Committee on the College (Appendix A, doc. 2).

6o

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Scholars did not constitute a separate order of students, as in English colleges; the possession of a scholarship did not effect a boy's seniority. Scholarships existed as early as 1643; additional 'exhibitions' or partial scholarships were provided by the College Corn between 1644 and 1653; and later, both special and general funds supported one or more ' Scholars of the House,' whose ungracious duty it was to watch over the college property and report quarterly to the Treasurer 'what dammage the Colledge hath susteyned . . . and by whom.' 1 A Scholar of the House was formally inducted into his scholarship by a formula similar to that of admitting fellows. The President addressed him as follows: IN

SCHOLARIBUS

Ι. Prsebebis omnimodam debitam reverentiam honorandis magistratibus ac Reverendis presbyteris, et presidi Collegij, vna cum socijs singulis. 2. Debitam diligentiam studijs incumbendo adhibebis, studijs inquam linguarum et artium liberalium, obsequendo Tutori tuo, et salutaribus, ejus preceptis, quamdiu in statu pupilari versatur fueris in hoc collegio. 3. Religiose in te suscipies curam, dum hie commoraberis, observandi singulas salutares leges, statuta et privilegia huius societatis, quantum in te si turn est: atque etiam ut observentur ab omnibus hujus Collegij membris in singulo uniuscujusque munere fideliter curabis. 4. Sedulö prospicies, nequid detriment! collegium capiat, quantum in te situm est, sive in ejus sumptibus, sive in sedificio et strueturä, fundis, proventibus fenestris cseterisque omnibus, quae nunc ad Collegium

ADMITTENDIS

Y o u shall observe all due reverence to the Honored Magistrates and Reverend Elders, and the President of the College, together with each Fellow. Y o u shall apply due diligence in attention to studies of the Tongues and the Liberal Arts, in compliance with your T u t o r and his salutary precepts, so long as you shall remain in a pupillary status in this College. Y o u shall religiously undertake, as long as you are in residence here, to obey all and singular salutary Laws, Statutes and Privileges of this Society, so far as in you lies; and also you shall faithfully attend that they be obeyed by all members of this College, each according to his own function. Y o u shall carefully be on the watch, so far as in you lies, that the College suffer no harm, either in expenditures, or in buildings, construction, estates, revenues, windows, or in any and every other thing now

ι. Laws of 1667; C. S. M., xv. 48, 204. See Chapters V and XVIII, and F. H. C., Chapter X X I , for additional details on scholarships and their donors.

COLLEGE ORGANIZATION pertinent, aut dum hie egeris pertinere possunt. Quod ad nos, Praesidem et socios scilicet, spectat, pollicemur nos tibi non defuturos, quibuscunque nostra intererit, imo vero in studijs tuis, et pietate progressum, quantum in nobis fuerit promouebimus. 1

61

appertaining to the College or which m a y appertain while y o u are acting here. So far as concerns us, the President and Fellows, we promise not to fail you, wherein our duty lies; on the contrary we shall promote your progress in your studies and piety, as much as we are able.

It is barely possible that a distinct class of sizars existed at Harvard for a few years, paying half tuition or none, in return for clerical and menial work. In the list of rooms in the Old College there is a 'Senior Fellow's Sizar's study,' 2 and the General Court's Committee in 1653/54 recommended the College 'to Ranke the scolers into 3 degrees as in englands vniversities,' sizars paying the lowest rate for board, pensioners the normal rate, and fellow-commoners double.3 We have no means of determining whether or not these three scales for board were adopted; but neither sizars nor pensioners are found in the college records; and although sundry undergraduates are credited in the Steward's accounts with monitor service and waiting in hall, they more often than not were senior to other students who performed no such services. Probably by 1650, and certainly by the end of Dunster's administration, all Harvard undergraduates, other than the occasional fellow-commoner, corresponded to the pensioners of Cambridge or commoners of Oxford. Neither term was used at Harvard, where the resident student body, whether undergraduate or bachelor, was called indifferently 'the scholars' or 'the students.' 4 The important lines of division at Harvard, as ever since in American colleges, were those of years: the classes. But within each class, previous to that of 1773, there was an order of seniority, which to the colonial undergraduate was a matter of great pith and moment. In this order the students were seated in hall, served at table, and given choice of studies; in the same order their names were posted at the buttery hatch, entered in the Steward's book and on monitor bills, printed on 1. C. S. M., xv. 37; in President Chauncy's handwriting. 2. F.H.C., pp. 283, 285. For sizars at Cambridge, see id. 83-84. 3. Appendix A, doc. 2. 4. 'Commoner' as printed in the version of the 1655 College Laws in Proc. Μ. H. S., xiv. 210, cap. 8, is a misprint for 'commencer.'

6α

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

the Commencement theses, and in each successive catalogue of graduates, even to the last Quinquennial published in 1930. So important to the students was their seniority that suspension from it 'and the priveledges thereof as viz hee shall Sit below his Fellows, and Chuse after them at Meales' was a serious punishment, and permanent degradation from seniority was the severest punishment inflicted on an undergraduate, short of expulsion, for cutting lectures and neglecting ' any Scholasticall exercise.' 1 If the offender were already at the foot of his class, ' for his Learning Sake hee shall performe exercises with the rest of his Classis, but bee put below Some of the next Classis in Sitting.' We have on record the pathetic plea of a degraded graduate, Samuel Melyen, asking that he be restored to his former seniority before the next catalogue of graduates was printed, in order that he might not go down to posterity at the foot of his class. The plea was disregarded, and Melyen is still last in 1696.2 Each entering class was placed in its order of seniority, during the first quarter of freshman year. Toward the end of the century there was a temporary 'placing' at that time, presumably by the Steward, and a formal or official 'placing' by the President and tutors, later in the year. We have no certain knowledge of the principles of this placing by which the seniority of undergraduates was determined. The simple English system of placing them by date of entrance was not followed. Nor was age the criterion. Arguing back from what was done in the 1760's, everyone has hitherto assumed that the ranking was a social one at Harvard from the beginning.3 Statements to that effect will be found in almost every history of Harvard or Yale or of the Colonies. Almost every writer on American education has taken a fling at the 'snobbery' involved in Harvard and Yale's ranking students according to their place in the social hierarchy. ι. Laws of 1655, C. S. M., xxxi. 336. This form of punishment was unknown at Oxford and Cambridge. It is first legalized in the Chaunceian code of 1655; but certain discrepancies between the order of seniority in Chesholme's Steward's accounts and the graduating order in classes before 1655 suggest that it was invented by Dunster. 2. Sibley, iv. 298-99. 3. See especially Franklin B. Dexter, 'Social Distinctions at Harvard and Yale,' in Proc. A. A. S., n.s. ix. 34-59, and Historical Papers (1918), pp. 203-22. Dr. Dexter's conclusions, as far as Harvard is concerned, are demolished in my article 'Precedence at Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century,' in Proc. A. A. S., n.s. xlii. 380-91.

COLLEGE

ORGANIZATION

63

It would indeed be strange if Harvard should have adopted such a system of social hierarchy when still under the government of English university men, for it was already a tradition in England that every university graduate was a gentleman, whatever his origin: W h y ist not strange to see a ragged clarke, Some start upp weauer or some butchers sonne: T h a t scrubd of late within a sleeueles gowne, When the commencement, like a morice dance, H a t h put a bell or two about his legges, Created him a sweet cleane gentleman: How then he gins to follow fashions. 1

Intellectual merit, in m y opinion, was the determining factor in seniority at Harvard, both in the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth. An entering student's proficiency was presumably determined by his schoolmaster's report, by his performance at the oral entrance examination, and, when 'placing' was postponed to the spring, by his first freshman terms. I have reached this conclusion partly by a process of exclusion, all other hypotheses having proved untenable when tested by the class lists; but there is also some positive though indirect evidence pointing the same w a y : ι . T h e College Laws of 1655, the first to mention seniority, provide ' losse of Seniority to his Classis' as a punishment only for ' neglect of scholasticall exercises,' not for misdemeanors. 1. Josiah Cotton (A.B. 1698) in his autobiography states that through ' Favour, not merit,' he was placed second in his Class, ' M r . Symes being the first.'2 This seems to imply that Josiah as a nephew of President Mather obtained more than his deserts on a scholastic scale. 3. John Denison (A.B. 1710) wrote to Rowland Cotton (A.B. 1695) of Sandwich on March 9, 1712/13, about his son Nathaniel Cotton, who was preparing to enter Harvard in the fall: ' N a t must mind his business or he will be very low in the Class for there are very good Schollars to come.' 3 Sir Denison must have known the system, for he was then 1. 'The Returne from Pernassus' (1601), in W. D. Macray, The Pilgrimage to Parnassus (1886), p. 118. 2. C. S. M., xxvi. 279. 3. M . H . S . , Letters and Papers, 1701-1720,71. 1.82.

64

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D UNIVERSITY

in his sixth or seventh year of residence at Harvard. From his letter it is clear that scholarship was to be the basis of 'placing' the Class of 1716, and that he could count on his correspondent's knowing that it was. No other inference from the letter seems possible. In the eighteenth century ranking by intellectual merit gave way to ranking freshmen by 'the Degrees of their ancestors'; 1 but whether this was a gradual evolution from the merit system, as influenced by provincial precedence, or whether it was an importation from Yale, is still obscure. There are, to be sure, some traces of other values than scholastic merit at an earlier period. Brothers in the same class, possibly as a concession to family peace, were (with two exceptions) placed together, and always in the order of their ages. And the freshman seniority, except as altered by punishments, casualties, or late arrivals, went onto the printed Commencement theses, and into the triennial catalogue of graduates.2 Even those who failed to take a second degree were left undisturbed in the seniority that they enjoyed when commencing B.A. Hence, no effort on a student's part could improve his permanent rank; but neglect of scholastic exercises could, and frequently did, impair this greatly prized privilege. But there is nothing incompatible with a merit system in the fact that so many Bulkeleys, Chauncys, Cottons, Denisons, Dudleys, Eliots, Mathers, Saltonstalls, Shepards, Symmes, and Winthrops enjoyed high seniority in the puritan century. These were families of energy and ability who were expected to show intellectual distinction from one generation to another, and seldom disappointed that expectation. THE CLASS

It was also in Dunster's day that the Class became an organic unit of Harvard College, with consequences affecting both the social and scholastic aspects of American higher education to ι . Letter of General John Winslow, 1749, quoted in my Precedence article from a Proc. M. H. S., ix. 6. T h e statement implies that this system came into vogue much earlier. T h e Class of 1772 was the last so placed; that of 1773 was placed in alphabetical order. 2. Senior sophisters who failed from absence or other causes to qualify for the B.A. did not have their names printed on the Commencement theses; but if they qualified later their names were printed in the Catalogue of Graduates, generally at the foot of their original Class, but sometimes restored to their former seniority.

COLLEGE ORGANIZATION

65

this day. A t Cambridge, undergraduates were divided into the freshman, sophomore, junior sophister, and senior sophister years. 1 But with the multiplicity of colleges, tutors, and programmes of study, these 'years' were as little organic in old Cambridge as American 'classes' have become in an age of free electives and residential units. A nearer Cambridge precedent for the Harvard class was the grex,2 the group of members of the same 'year' at the same college, who together went through all the ceremonies required for the B.A. In the smaller Scottish universities, and Trinity College, Dublin, the 'year' was organic, since all students who entered at the same time were taught in a class by a single tutor, as in grammar school.3 The same division of students arose quite naturally in primitive Harvard. President Dunster first organized the undergraduates into three classes, which are described as the first, second, and third 'yeares' in 'New Englands First Fruits'; 4 the Class of 164a is referred to as 'The Students of the first Classis 5 that have beene these foure yeeres trained up in University-Learning.' The reason why Dunster adopted a three-year course for the B.A. is fairly obvious. On taking office in the late summer of 1640, he was given charge over the Class of 1642, which had suffered their freshman year (1638-39) under Eaton, and enjoyed the year when the College was closed (1639-40) under private tutelage. Dunster regarded these boys as junior sophisters in 1640-41, and they graduated in 1642. But for those who entered freshman in the fall of 1640, three years' continuous study for the B.A., unruffled by Eaton or by dispersal, were deemed sufficient. Hence the class were given their first 1. For explanations of these class names, see F. H. C., pp. 29, 66. 2. Id. 72 n. A t Oxford, determining Bachelors were sorted into as many as ten groups, in order to give each man more opportunity to dispute twice; each group was called a classis; but this seems to have had no analogy to the American class (A. Clark, Register of Univ. Oxford, 11. part i. p. 52). 3. F. H. C., p. 137. Although the Scottish universities in the nineteenth century used the word 'class' in the American sense, ' y e a r ' was the word used around 1600. 4. / 2 3 r > 2 35. 2 4 x > 263, 267. 3. Journal of Jasper Danckaerts (1913 ed.), p. 267. 4. C. S. M., xv. 31. J. William C. Lane, in C. S. M., x x i v . 166-68. The Harris salt here illustrated is six inches in diameter; the three brackets fixed on the broad rim are meant to support a napkin. It is marked with the initials I G Ε for Jose and Elizabeth Glover. It must have been used in Mrs. Glover's house at Cambridge, then in President Dunster's household, and came into Richard Harris's possession as a legacy from his sister

THE

GREAT

SALT

GIVEN

BY

RICHARD

HARRIS,

1644

T H E STUDENT A N D HIS D A Y

95

President Dunster, in establishing the English custom that a fellow-commoner should present his college with a piece of plate. T h e College disbursed over £ 1 4 'for brass peuter and linnen' from 1663 to 1668; but by 1674 the stock of table linen was but ' i fellowes table-cloaths.' During the next few years Treasurer Richards made large outlays 'for diaper and puter,' so that the hall, in 1683, was well supplied with common, fellows', and commencement table linen. 1 Only one hall chair is mentioned in the inventory of 1674; this must have been used by the President, or, in his absence, the Senior Fellow; presumably all other members of the College sat on backless forms. Pewter dishes may have graced high table, but the students certainly ate from wooden trenchers, 2 using their own knives and spoons, and drank from pewter cans or cue-cups. There is no evidence in seventeenth-century inventories of any china or crockery in the College. All members of the House appear to have partaken of the same food. Eleven o'clock dinner, to judge from the provisions that the Steward received, consisted largely of bread, beef, and beer—the Englishman's trinity of good provender. T h e bread was largely of wheat, the most popular medium of student payment, but a good deal of 'rye-and-Injun'—the ancestor of our Boston brown b r e a d — m u s t have been baked to use up the corn, rye, and rye meal with which some parents preferred to square their accounts. Doubtless much of the 'Indian' went into hasty pudding. Using supplies on hand, beef would often have been varied by veal, mutton, lamb, and pork; one student, but only one, paid in goat mutton, which can hardly have made him popular. Considerable quantities of salt, pepper, and chives were purchased by the Steward for seasoning; and spice at Commencement. Poultry and such luxuries appeared seldom, save at Commencement; and the only fruits or vegetables received in any quantities by the Steward were apples and pease. Potatoes were hardly known in New England until the following century. I judge, therefore, that dinner in Harvard Mrs. Elizabeth (Harris, Glover) Dunster. Francis H. Bigelow, Historic Silver of the Colonies (1931), pp. 253-54. 1. C. S. Μ., xv. 214, 62, 73-74; Treasurer Richards's ms. accounts, fol. 34 v°. 2. Five shillings' worth of trenchers, which can hardly have cost more than a penny each, were purchased by Steward Chesholme in 1659 (C. S. M., xxxi. 231).

φ

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

commons at our period consisted of a dish of meat, accompanied by hasty pudding, dumpling, or dish of pease, with a sizing of bread and a cue of beer. Students were not allowed to fetch their own commons—''self service' was confined to bevers. 'Servitors,' students who earned from 12s 6d to 10s a quarter by 'waytinge in the Hall,' set and cleared the tables, and brought viands from the kitchen hatch and beer from the buttery hatch. They were responsible for the return of all utensils to the kitchen, but were not expected to wash up. 1 That task — no light one with wooden trenchers —· was performed by cook and butler. 'Afternoon-Bever' (merenda in the Latin laws) was a repetition of morning bever. The hour was probably around 5, since Dunster's daily schedule required disputations in hall at 2, 3, and 4.a The Chaunceian code fixes evening prayers at 5,3 and mentions no afternoon bever; but there must have been some opportunity for refreshment between an 1 1 o'clock dinner and a 7:30 supper. Afternoon bever suitably fortified the students for evening prayers, which included more translation and logical analysis. These exercises probably left some time for study before supper (coena), for which the ample space of an hour and a half was allowed. Supper seems to have been served at 7:30 throughout the century.4 In the early days it was recorded that 'much inconvenience falleth out by the Schollars bringing Candle in Coarse into the Hall.' Hence, the President or Steward was required, in 1650, to pay the butler i o j on the thirteenth day of September and December,' to provide Candles for the hall, for prayer time and supper.' And, since the college treasury would find so great an outlay as 10s 'burthensome,' this sum 'shall bee put proportionably upon every scholar who ι . C. S. M., x v . 3 3 - 3 4 , 46, 78. In 1 6 8 5 the Fellows 'ordered, that out of absent Commons of bread and bear shall be allowed to the Butler thirty shillings on account of washing the trenchers.' Absent commons presumably meant the detriments. 2. F. H. C., p. 4 3 5 . Afternoon bever came between 3 and 3 : 3 0 at N e w College, Oxford (Ms. Governing Board Records for J u l y 3 , 1 6 6 0 ) . 3 . C. S. M., x x x i . 3 3 2 . 4. T h e L a w s of 1 6 4 2 - 4 6 forbid any student to 'bee absent from his studyes or appointed exercises above an houre at Morning-Bever, hälfe an houre at aftemoone-Bever; an houre and an hälfe at Dinner and so long at Supper' ( F . H . C., p. 3 3 6 ) . T h e Chaunceian code says, ' a n hower and hälfe at dinner and after evening prayer untill nine of the Clocke' (C. S. A / . , x x x i . 3 3 0 ) — and evening prayer came at 5 p.m. (id. 3 3 2 ) . N o . 1 0 of the L a w s of 1686 reads 'Nullus Scholaris . . . a Studijs . . . abesto, excepta Semi-horä

THE STUDENT AND HIS DAY

97

retayneth his head in the Butteryes.' 1 From that date until the Chauncy administration, almost every student was debited in the Steward's book two shillings on December quarter-day for 'Candell and wood for publicke fyer.' That made a comfortable sum to keep the hall heated and lighted on winter evenings. So supper went on in the festive blaze from the great hall fireplace, somewhat aided by the light from seven brass candlesticks.2 Fuel for chamber fires was provided by the chamber-fellows, many loads and 'jagges' 3 of wood being debited to students in the Steward's accounts. At the English colleges there was little difference between the two daily meals; when John Cotton was scholar of Trinity, a supper of 'rost mutton' followed a dinner of 'boyld beafe' five days in the week.4 At Harvard the Steward's need to work off the different provisions paid in undoubtedly provided more variety. For supper there would have been beef, veal, pork, lamb, or mutton, probably in the form of a meat pie which was a favorite with Englishmen then, as now; or a hasty pudding with bacon; or oatmeal porridge and a dish of eggs; and in some manner the Steward must have used up the considerable quantity of sugar paid in by students.5 With a seventeenth-century cookbook one could make up a variety of imaginary menus from the Steward's stores; but we have not the slightest inkling as to Will Bordman's culinary skill. There is but one entry in the Steward's accounts of fish, which one would expect to be served at least on Saturday night; and not a single mention of game. Whatever the supper dish, we may Jentaculo, Prandio veri> Sesqui-horä concessä, nec-non Coenae usque ad horam nonam' (C. S. M., xvi. 849; Magnalia, book iv. 1 3 3 , no. 15). Comparing these, it seems that supper must have come at 7 : 3 0 , and that the recreation hour extended until 9. ι. C. S. M., xv. 35. The last somewhat ambiguous phrase was equivalent to the English collegiate term 'keeping your name in the books'; the modern Harvard term would be 'signed on.' 2. Inventory of 1674 (C. S. M., x v . 62). Four students paid in candle, one in tallow, and one in wax; but most of the candles were doubtless made in the kitchen from beef tallow, as in the farmhouses of the day. 3. Ά small cart-load* (Ν. E. D.); whence an alcoholic ' j a g ' is derived. 4. Ms. accounts of Bachelors' and Scholars' table, 1598, Trinity College Muniments. 5. 'The steward is Creditor' by butter 20s id and sugar and eggs 24s 4d in March 1657; £ 3 17J for butter and eggs and 2S S 8«r T T

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CREDITS OF E D W A R D R A W S O N A N D D E B I T S OF GERSHOM BULKELEY IN CHESHOLME'S

ACCOUNTS

N o t e p a y m e n t s in 'old Cow,' ' s t u f e , ' pork, wheat, malt, and a sword; and on last line, ' p a y d to Sam Grean for a ps[alm] book alminackes and Cuttinge his hair.'

THE STUDENT AND HIS DAY

105

toward the credit side of his son John's college account. Mr. Richard Harris, the elderly fellow-commoner, took ' a paire of shooes' worth 3 J ^d off the Steward's hands—or feet. Goodwife D a y , the printer's widow, relieved him of ' a paire of boyes shooes,' is Ы·, and Abraham Smith, a Cambridge farmer, paid 16s for a pair of Glover boots. Will Bordman, the cook, who had a large family, bought five pair of shoes for 1 5 J lod, which went down to John Glover's credit; and 'for vampine goodm bordman boots,' cook paid Steward $s 6d. Three students left saddlery with the Steward to sell for their account; but the most astonishing item in the whole book is a credit of Edward Rawson: 'payd by a Sword vnto the steward,' 8j 6d. Was Goodman Chesholme setting up for a gentleman, or did he nourish military ambitions? On the debit side of the accounts, there are frequent deductions for transportation, such as is 6d for sending for a cow twice; и for 'bringinge 8 bush of wheatt and 1 bush of malt from Charlstown' for Samuel Nowell; id for 'bringinge suger from Charlstown' — 42 pounds of it — also debited on Nowell's account; and is 6d paid by Samuel Talcott's father 'to John boultall for bring the wheatt and malt from the Creek' (the town landing near the present Kirkland House). The Apostle Eliot dumps meal for son Samuel on the Brighton side of the Charles, and it costs fourpence to bring it 'from the other sid of the watter.' 1 Since the soil of Connecticut was more kindly to wheat than that of eastern Massachusetts, many of the Connecticut students discharged their debts in that grain. 'Fright from harford of hogshead of malt and a small barrell of meall' cost Joseph Haynes, the Governor's son, i i j 6d; Sam Talcott paid 4J 6d ' b y fright from Canecticont to boston for 8 bush of wheatt' and is 6d 'from boston to Cambridge.' 2 It is often possible to guess at local or parental specialties from a student's credit. The Reverend Thomas Carter of Woburn, for instance, must have gone in for pigs, since his son Sam pays in three hogs, weighing 1 1 2 , 60, and 79 pounds, a 'small shotte wight 48 //,' and 'backen.' ι . C. S. M., x x x i . 85, 70, 2 0 0 , 2 2 3 . 1. Id. 1 9 1 , 200. In 1656, John Davis paid the higher 'fright' of 7 \ d a bushel 'from harford to boston'{id. 58).

I об

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D

UNIVERSITY

COST OF COLLEGE EDUCATION

From the Steward's accounts it is possible to compute the total cost of a college education in the 1650's. For commons and sizings the average quarter-bill was about £2 $s. Fixed quarterly charges were 6s 8d for tuition (8s under Chauncy); bedmaking ιJ (yd more under Chauncy); average study rent is 6d (4J Sd under Chauncy). There was an annual charge of is a year fire and candle money after 1651, and 3s 4d gallery money for the whole four years, after 1655. Commencement charges and the customary tips came to £3 15J under both administrations. Hence the total average cost of four years in college, exclusive of clothes, laundry, and books, was about £55 around the year 1660, when our Steward's accounts break off. This was for the course leading to the Bachelor's degree. Those who took a second degree either resided, paying the same charges less tuition; or lived out, paying detriments at the rate of 5.Г a quarter. The Commencement fee for Masters of Arts was also £3. The most striking proof of the low cost of a college education in the seventeenth century is afforded by the comparison of these farm credits with the college debits. A quarter's tuition under Dunster (6j 8d) was more than covered by a bushel and a half of wheat, at 4s 6d. Gershom Bulkeley of Concord was kept in college an entire year by a side of beef weighing 141 pounds, a 'small side of backen wight 40 li,' 5 bushels of wheat, 14 of Indian, 15! of apples, and ' a Caske of butter wight 90 pound with the Caske.' A side of beef, a 'small hooge,' and two calves paid the quarterly commons and sizings, tuition, study rent, and bed-making of Peter Bulkeley 2d, whose more economical uncle Eleazar managed to scrape through a quarter with 9 bushels of Indian, 2 of apples, and a cask of butter. Joseph Farnsworth (1655) came to college freshman year with 4 bushels of malt, worth 22s, and he 'payd to mr. Dunster In malte and Siluer' 15.$·, but had 8d deducted for poor measure. For ' a lyttell browne Cowe' he was credited £4, less 3s Sd for bringing it to Cambridge. Cow and malt paid this student's commons and sizings, bed-making, and study rent for half a year. A hog, weighing 63 pounds, keeps Zachary Brigden in food and beer for a whole term; 6 bushels of barley malt, a bushel of parsnips, and ' wayttinge in the hall' pay for a quarter's tuition, study rent, bed-making, fire, and candle. Walter

THE STUDENT AND HIS D A Y

107

Hooke's father sends from New Haven a cask of butter and 1 barrels of salt beef, and is troubled with no further payments for nine months. ' A blacke Cow' and ' a fatt Cow' from George Babcock (who probably owed their father money) enabled the two Mather brothers. Increase and Eleazar, to increase in knowledge and godliness as freshmen! And for those whose fathers could not spare an occasional cow or a few bushels of grain, there were scholarships. What a contrast to the burdens of the farming parent of a college student today. After three centuries, wheat, corn, and rye bring even less to their producers, and meat only a little more. But the average board and lodging at Harvard has increased thirty-fold, and tuition is now almost seventy times as costly as in President Dunster's day. SCHOLARSHIPS, E X H I B I T I O N S , A N D OTHER S T U D E N T A I D

Not many scholarships are recorded in Steward Chesholme's accounts, 1650-60, or in the scanty Corporation records before 1672. The most important recipients of aid were the Scholars of the House, generally senior sophisters or resident Bachelors of Arts. The office seems to have been created about 1667, when the duties are first defined in the College Laws. Each Scholar of the House must 'take a strict Account of all the buildings, Chambers, Studyes, and fences, belonging to the Colledge,' and 'give an account quarterly to the Treasurer what dammage the Colledge hath susteyned in any of the aforementioned particulars and by whom.' 1 The appointment was for one year, but renewable; and from one to six Scholars of the House were appointed annually, from 1669.2 The first mention of their annual stipend is £5, in 1675.3 For other scholars, the Corporation merely distributed as they deemed best the available income earmarked for scholarships, and the town contributions.4 In the 1650's, only ten students 5 are credited with scholarships; these were annual grants of £3 15J, some1. See above, pp. 60-61, and C. S. M., x v . 204. 2. Id. 49, ζο, 63-69, 74, 77, 8o, and see index to x v i . 3. Id. 63. 4. See F. H. C., p. 318. 5. Urian Oakes (1649), Wigglesworth (1651), Thomas Shepard, Samuel Nowell, Samuel Whiting, and Joshua Ambrose (1653), John Eliot (1656), Zechariah Symmes, Zechariah Brigden, and John Hale (1657). O f course there may have been others recorded in the lost or mutilated pages of Chesholme's accounts.

io8

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D UNIVERSITY

times once renewed,1 and all paid to sophisters or junior bachelors. There are many other entries of moneys 'paid by the President,' and some of these may have been scholarships, or personal gifts of the President; but we know that many of them were simply payments of moneys placed in the President's hands. Chesholme also records a £3 quarterly 'Exebition' to John Collins ( A . B . 1 6 4 9 ) , while he was fellow and tutor, and 'by his Chollership when the Constipell hath Collected i t ' £3 15j, an allusion to some town rate assigned to the College by the General Court. Nathaniel White (A.B. 1646) received an 'Exebition' of £2 after commencing M.A. 2 The only other opportunities offered to poor scholars as a means of earning part of their expenses were clerical work, waiting on table, the butlership, and the monitorship. Jonathan Ince (A.B. 1650) seems to have acted as butler, college tinker, and the President's private secretary; his entire expenses were met by his butlership, 'makinge up the Colledge accounts' quarterly, 'wrytinge sundry lawes orders and pettitiones for the Colledg' and 'wrytting seuerall thinges for the Presedent,' and 'mendinge a greatt Canne.' 3 Joshua Long (A.B. 1653) on two occasions earned a pound from the President ' b y entringe two actiones,' presumably at law; and Brinsmead (1655) did a certain amount of devilling for Dunster. Servitors or hall waiters received at first £4, later £2 IOJ, per annum.4 The first monitor appointed, at a quarterly stipend of 15J, was John Hale (A.B. 1657), in his sophomore year.® The duties of that unpopular office were defined in the Laws of 1655: There shall be appointed a Generali Monitor that shall observe them that are fayling, eyther by absence from prayers or Sermons, or come tardy to the same which shall bring weekely a Catalogue of the Names of Delinquents to the President; which Monitor shall bee allowed a Stipend of three pounds per Annum for this paines of his, which shall Quarterly by equall division be Set upon the Heads of all the Under-Graduates whose Names are in the Buttery. 6 1. Eliot's was twice renewed. 2. C. M., xxxi. 29. An Exhibition was the English term for a minor scholarship. Exhibitions were not regularly established at Harvard until the following century. 3. Id. 60-61. In President Dunster's notebook the long letter to our Eleutherian benefactors is written by Ince; see above, p. 42. 4. Id. 82, 168, 170, 244-45.

5- Id. 174·

6· Id- 335·

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109

A single monitor's bill for this period has been preserved. On it are written the names, in order of seniority, of the Classes 1664-67; absences are noted by a pinprick.1 For many, possibly most, of the years prior to 1672, the college butler was a student, who earned £12 a year for that highly important and responsible office. 2 The office of bell-ringer was created in 1667; his 'office is, to ring the bell, (except for meales) to keep the clock, and to call the president to prayers; for which, he shall receive from the steward, ζ ΐ ί per Annum.' 3 Later, this duty was delegated to the butler, who was ordered by the Corporation in 1676 to 'ring the bell at five of the clock in the morning, winter and Summer, and at nine of the clock at night throughout the yeare, beside his ringing at the other stated times for prayers and Meales.' 4 A t the 9 o'clock bell the students who have been sitting about the hall fire after supper, or in fine weather strolling in the Yard, must retire to their respective chambers or studies. Having been up since sunrise or five o'clock, most of them, it may be presumed, are ready to turn in; but the College Laws allow senior students and fellows to 'watch,' to stay up with a light in their studies, until an hour before midnight.5 This is their opportunity to study ponderous Latin folios of Philosophy and Theology, undisturbed by undergraduate members of the House. A t eleven o'clock their candles are extinguished, and the School of the Prophets relapses into silence and darkness. 1. I t was discovered by Franklin B. Dexter between the leaves of a book in the Y a l e Library, and is described and printed in his Misc. Historical Papers, pp. 1 - 5 . 2. C. S. M., x x x i . 60-61, 222, 241, 2 j i ; Proc. Μ. H. S., x v i n . 15: the five studentbutlers of whom there is record were Jonathan Ince (A.B. 1650), James Noyes (1659), Samuel Eliot (1660), Manasseh Armitage (1660), and Edward Taylor (1671). 3. C. S. M., x v . 48,46. Zechariah Brigden (A.B. 1657) received 22s 6d ' b y ringinge the bell and waytinge' in 1654 (C. S. M., x x x i . 170). 4. C. S. M., x v . 65. A t Emmanuel 'the butler onely shall toull the bell' for meals and bevers, according to the ms. Decrees agreed upon by the Master and Fellows, 1588. The distinction between ringing and tolling a bell was well understood by the Harvard authorities, and the proper discrimination was made in the records. A bell was rung to give preliminary warning of meals, prayers, lectures, etc., and tolled as a signal that the thing was about to begin, or the buttery hatch to open; cf. above, p. 90; F. H. C., p. 288; Ν. Ε. H. G. R., LXV. 279. J. Laws of i 6 j 5 , C. S. M., x x x i . 331.

VI COLLEGE AMUSEMENTS 1640-1672 Harvard College kept throughout the year; 1 but this does not mean that no vacations were enjoyed. The Steward's accounts prove that almost every undergraduate, excepting those who lived at a great distance from Cambridge, was absent from college for part or the whole of a quarter, every little while. President Chauncy's laws declare that Every Student that is under-graduate shall bee bound to Continuance in the Colledge, excepting upon weighty occasions made knowne to the President and his Tutor and with their Consent; and notwithstanding his discontinuance shall pay hälfe Tuition. 1

Such 'weighty occasions' were found by almost everyone at least once a year. One can trace such absences in the Steward's accounts, since every discontinuer, besides his half tuition, was required to ' beare a share in Colledge detriments' (overhead expenses) by paying five shillings a Quarter to the Steward. But Noe Student shall board or lye out of the Colledge without just Cause allowed by the President: nor shall any stay out of the Colledge after nine of the Clocke at Night nor watch after eleven, nor have a Light before foure in the morning, except upon extraordinary occasions. 1 . This was the practice of the Cambridge colleges, although the summer term there was not counted for residence toward a degree. The Harvard College Laws of 1655 (C. S. M.s x x x i . 333-34) provide that there shall be disputations all the year except ' a Fort-Night after the Commencement for all the Students.' Although Commencement came on August 12, 1656, twelve freshmen are marked by the Steward as 'entred' August 23, eleven days after; and in the diary of William Adams (A.B. 1671) in 4 Coli. Μ. Η. S., ι. 8-21, he records residing during this fortnight more often than not. But by the end of the century the period after Commencement had become a general vacation. See Chapter X X I . 2. C. S. M., x x x i . 3 3 1 .

COLLEGE AMUSEMENTS

III

There are also many instances of abnormally low commons and sizings, suggesting a few weeks' absence for which no tuition was remitted and no detriments charged. These individual vacations came at no particular time of year. The diary of William Adams (A.B. 1671), son of an Ipswich husbandman, reveals his comings and goings. On September 21, 1667 he was admitted to college. Two months later he 'went home to Ipswich afoot,' and after five days 'returned to Cambridge upon Mr D. Epps's horse, was lost in Charlestowne woods 1 and lay in the woods all night, so bewildered I took N . for S. and contra.' Next June 16 he started for Ipswich again, spending a night on the way at Wenham. His next absence was in November of sophomore year, a trip of four days to Rowley with a junior sophister, Ammi Ruhamah Corlet. The following March 21 he went home again, returning the 26th by 'Prince's bark. . . . Had a brave passage' of fifteen hours from Ipswich to Boston. From that time he appears to have resided continuously until October, when he made a three-day excursion to Swansea with his 'dear friend Mr. Hez: Willet.' Later in the same month, on the occasion of a grandmother's death (that fertile excuse for college absences), he returned home for a week. In January 1669/70, Adams and Willet made a second excursion to Swansea which was not so pleasant; the one froze his finger and the other his ear on the journey, William put a leg through the ice crossing Neponset River, and Hezekiah had a bad fall. But the two friends went off for another weekend together in March; and in May Adams made his first visit home since October. The 'weighty occasion' this time was to escort a young boy to the Ipswich grammar school. Immediately after Commencement 1670 Adams made a more extended two weeks' excursion into Essex County 'with some scholars,' calling on the way on a certain pair of 'incomparable sisters, the 2 Poles about which the sky of excellency is turned.' Senior sophister year had barely begun when Adams visited at Swansea his 'long unseen friend Mr. H. Willet,' who had not returned to college. New Year's Day he passed at Dorchester, and was 'detained by the weather 3 days and 4 nights.' Two nights at Boston in February and March; and at the end of that month 'to Ipswich afoot' with his classmate Sam Sewall, to stay a week. May 16, 'went to Ipswich I. T h e present Middlesex Fells and Winchester.

112

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D

UNIVERSITY

for Mr. Thomas Danforth' the Steward, probably to procure some provisions to square his accounts; and three days later, 'came to Cambridge attending on the worshipful Richard Saltonstall Esqr.' The worthy magistrate took a fancy to Adams, and gave him a little clerical business which required a trip to Roxbury and Dorchester before the end of the month, taking in Election Day on his return through Boston. And on August 8, 1671, Adams 'was admitted to the degree of Batchelour of Arts in Harvard Colledge in N.E. under the Reverend Charles Chancey President.' 1 One occasion, no doubt, of these vacations was the absence of tutors, who (judging from Michael Wigglesworth's diary) were always gadding about giving sample sermons in the hope of obtaining a 'call.' Michael even went as far as Martha's Vineyard and New Haven on these errands (the voyage from the Charles to the Quinnipiac took twelve days), and made excursions to town, as well. Ί was twice at Boston this week, both times provoking the Lord by pride,' he records.2 An improving prayer-meeting at Dorchester absolved him from conscientious twinges for attending the wedding of his classmate Butler there, the following year.3 LAWFUL RECREATIONS

In the matter of lawful recreations for Harvard students before 1674, the historian must confess to drawing the records almost blank. The puritans, with their emphasis on the virtue of hard work and the sin of idleness, overlooked the physical need of a young scholar for rest and recreation. Their only grievance against their mother universities (aside from the 'prelatical' atmosphere) was the 'waste of precious time' by students who were not kept almost constantly at their books and stated exercises. Emmanuel, in that respect, was better conducted than any other English college, and Harvard imitated 1. 4 Coll. Μ. H. S., I. 8-13. Another curious bit of evidence as to students' homegoings is in the one surviving copy, at the Library of Congress, of Zechariah Brigden's Almanack of the Coelestial Motions for 1659. Against the date November 23 we find Iονσον ονβ>τ όμβ, and against February 15-16 ωτεσον ωβ>τ όμε. Thomas Johnson and Caleb Watson were members of the Class of 1661, some other member of which doubtless owned this almanac. 2. Ms. Diary (Μ. H. S.), July 30, 1653. 3. Ibid., quoted in Sibley, I. 298.

COLLEGE AMUSEMENTS from Emmanuel a system of including recreation in somewhat ample meal hours: n to 12:30 noon, 7:30 to 9 p.m., and two half-hours for the bevers. 'Noe undergraduate upon any pretence of recreation, or any other Cause whatsoever (unlesse allowed by the President, or his Tutor) shall bee absent from his Studyes, or appointed exercises in the Colledge' at any other time; 'but while he is in the Colledge hee shall studiously redeeme his time.' 1 And as Harvard, like the English colleges, forbade playing cards, but unlike them provided no bowling green, tennis court, or bathing pool, it would seem that the only possible recreation in these restricted hours would have been conversation, light reading, music, walking about Cambridge and in the College Yard, and swimming or skating, according to the season. There was nothing in the rules to forbid strolling about, so long as the students did not haunt taverns; and Goody Bradish's taproom, as we have seen, did not count as a tavern. Certainly the students must have walked somewhere, to incur such frequent charges for 'shooe mendinge' as we find in the Steward's accounts.2 Music and singing we have been taught not to expect in a puritan college; nor, in spite of the accumulating evidence of puritan humaneness, should I have looked for them at Harvard but for the recent work of an English historian of music, and the simultaneous discovery of ballads in a Harvard student's notebook. Dr. Percy A. Scholes has demolished the ancient superstition that the English puritans were opposed to vocal and instrumental music. Milton, Cromwell, and Bunyan, for instance, 'were all keen music-lovers.' The Lord Protector loved choral singing, possessed an organ, and kept an organist; at one of his daughters' weddings there was 'mixt dancing' to an orchestra of forty-eight pieces, and on another like occasion he himself took part in a vocal-dramatic performance.3 The first 1. Laws of 1655, C. S. M., xxxi. 330. Emmanuel used another puritanical phrase: 'that all other times shold be spent in their Calling.' The meal and recreation hours at Emmanuel were 7:30 to 8 a.m., 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., about fifteen minutes for afternoon bever, and 5 to 7 p.m. Ms. Emmanuel Order-Book, Orders for 1588, p. 9. 2. Francis Moore is most frequently mentioned as college cordwainer. There are also a few charges for tailoring in the Steward's book — the Hooke brothers from New Haven 'payd to goodman bordman for makinge apperell' 7s 4J, and 'for makinge a sut of Clothes' 6s 8d (C. S. M., xxxi. 120, 157). 3. Percy A. Scholes, the Puritans and Music (London, 1934), p. 5; and see his index under Cromwell, and К. B. Murdock's review in N. E. Q., VIII. 433-37.

i i

4

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D UNIVERSITY

Italian opera performed in England was under the Protectorate; 1 and the English musical tradition lasted right through the period of puritan supremacy. The puritans' attitude toward music was a part of their attitude toward the fine arts; such things were all very well in their place, but their place was small.3 B y taking instrumental music out of the churches, closing the theatres, and imposing a grim puritan Sabbath, they greatly narrowed the average person's opportunity to hear or perform music; and, moreover, they were constantly on the watch lest an over-indulgence in music lead to 'waste of precious time.' It should be clearly understood, however, that there was nothing new or exclusively puritan in this attitude toward secular music. 'Plato, in a celebrated passage, even inveighs bitterly against the gross immorality and luxuriousness of all mere instrumental music.' 3 In the eighth century, St. John of Damascus voiced in his well known hymn, Τ as tipas ras αΙωνίας ('Those Eternal Bowers'), the ordinary posture of pious medieval theologians: What! with pipe and tabor fool away the light, When He bids you labour, when He tells you, ' F i g h t ' ! *

When James Melvill wrote in his diary about the year 1574: It was the grait mercie of my God that keipit me from anie grait progress in singing and playing on instruments, for giff I haid atteined to anie reasonable missure therein I haid never don guid vtherwayes, in respect of my amorus disposition, wherby Sathan sought even then to deboiche me,5 1. Scholes, op. cit., pp. 203-04. Sergeant Maynard, later a benefactor of the Harvard College Library, was one of the puritans who put on this opera at Rutland House. 2. Id. chaps, xi, xii. J. P . M a h a f f y , Old Greek Education (1905), p. 61. The passage is in the Republic, book iii. Cf. Aristotle, Politico, viii. 6. 1341 ff., who has to answer the objection 'of those who say that the study of music is vulgar,' but concludes t h a t ' the right measure will be attained if students of music stop short' of professional attainments (W. D . Ross ed., χ . 1340-41). 4. Rev. J. M . Neale, Hymns 0/ the Eastern Church (London, 1882), p. £2. Cf. the severe strictures of Tertullian and St. John Chrysostom on secular music and the theatre. All through the Middle Ages there was a wide gulf between Christian ideals and ordinary practice; the puritans simply attempted to bridge the gulf, and to enforce the rules which had enjoyed theoretical acceptance for centuries. 5. Diary (ed. 1829), p. 23. Cf. F. H. C., pp. 126 п., 130. Dr. Johnson remarked at Mull in 1773 that 'if he had learnt music, he should been have afraid he would have done nothing else but play. It was a method of employing the mind without the labour of

COLLEGE AMUSEMENTS

"5

he was simply expressing the orthodox Platonic and Christian view toward music that was not devotional. A t least one Harvard student who was musically inclined heard this discouraging doctrine. Josiah Flynt, a freshman in 1660-61, ventured to beg his uncle Hoar to send him a fiddle from London. Instead, the future President sent him a long letter of advice, with remarks calculated to quench any musical aspirations he might have: Musick I had almost forgot I suspect you seek it both to soon, and to much. This be assured of that if you be not excellent at it Its worth nothing at all. And if you be excellent it will take up so much of your mind and time that you will be worth little else: And when all that excellence is attained your acquest will prove little or nothing of real profit to you unlesse you intend to take upon you the trade of fidling. . . ,1 Which could never be! But Mr. Hoar does go on to say that he has procured 'the Instruments desired' for Flynt's sisters, 'for whom tis more proper and they also have more leisure to looke after it.' Musical instruments were rare in New England before the close of the century, but not unknown. One of our university founders, the Reverend Edmund Brown of Sudbury, bequeathed a 'base v y o l ' and sundry books of music in his will; 3 and Nathaniel Rogers of Ipswich, father of President Rogers, left ' a treble viall.' 3 John Foster, a collegemate of would-be fiddler Flynt and later the Boston printer patronized by the Mathers, left a 'Gittarue' and a 'Viall' in 1681.4 Possibly these instruments were the nucleus of an informal college orchestra that Josiah Flynt wished to join! A decade before their time in college, a chance reference in the diary of Tutor Wigglesworth proves that music was being played by students. On June 25, 1653, he heard an idle pupil, who was the especial object of his prayers, 'in the forenoon with ill company playing musick, though I had so solemly warn'd him but yesterday of letting his spirit go after pleasthinking at all, and with some applause from a man's self.' Boswell's Life (London, 1846), v. 47. ι . See Appendix C. 2. F. H. C., p. 369. 3. Rees. Quart. Court Essex County, in. 231. He died in 16JJ. 4. Samuel A. Green, John Foster (1909), p. 52.

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HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

ures.' 1 Playing and singing were not contrary to the College Laws; but this negative evidence is double-edged, for it may only mean that there was not enough music at Harvard to worry the authorities. The strongest evidence that we have of secular singing among the students is in the manuscript commonplace book of Seaborn Cotton (A.B. 1651), 2 the son born to John Cotton on the voyage from England. In this notebook the future minister of Hampton copies almost the whole of three well known English ballads, 'The Love-Sick Maid; Or, Cordelia's Lamentation for the absence of her Gerhard,' 3 'The Last Lamentation of the Languishing Squire; or, Love overcomes all Things,' 4 and 'The Two Faithful Lovers,' 5 together with snatches of others that I am unable to identify. 6 Compared with the printed versions, young Seaborn's are somewhat inaccurate; but his variants fit in with the metre. This sort of discrepancy suggests that he had heard the ballads sung in college, and recorded the words by memory, rather than from a printed ballad sheet. Considering, moreover, that the conscious study of English balladry came about two centuries later, it is highly improbable that a Harvard student would have taken the trouble to write down the words of a ballad unless he had intended to sing them.7 A bar of music appears in Elnathan Chauncy's commonplace book. Twice every Sabbath, Harvard students had an opportunity to excercise their voices in singing psalms at Cambridge meeting. And when President Dunster and Richard Lyon were ι . Sibley, ι. 264. 2. Owned by the New England Historic Genealogical Society. That it was begun in Seaborn's undergraduate days is indicated by a copy of a letter dated August 10, 1650, that Seaborn copied into it. 3. Printed in J . W. Ebsworth, the Roxburghe Ballads, yi. 563-66; there is a copy of a black-letter broadside in the Huth collection of ballads, Child Memorial Library. 4. Id. vi. 228. 5. Printed in Ebsworth, The Bagford Ballads, 11. 4 7 1 - 7 4 . They were identified by my colleague Professor Hyder E . Rollins, and by Miss Florence Berlin. A few lines of the ' T w o Faithful Lovers' are also in Elnathan Chauncy's book. 6. For other songs copied by Seaborn, which may have been sung in college, see further in this chapter. The reputation for good singing of the church later ministered to by Seaborn's brother John (A.B. 1657) suggests that the Cotton family was musical (Sibley, ι. 500-01). 7. The only extant copies of 'The Two Faithful Lovers' are dated not earlier than 1670, which adds to the probability that these students had not seen it in print. Bagford

Ballads, 11. 474, and Bibliotheca Lindesiana (1890), no. 388.

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With autographs of Increase Mather and Mather Byles

GREEK

AND

HEBREW

203

had such fatal results for the Ephraimites at the passages of the Jordan. 1 But it must be admitted that Dunster's proposed substitutes for other transliterations were no better than those of his learned correspondent. BOOKS, SUBJECTS, AND T H E S E S

All teachers are apt to hold that subject most important which they know best; and Dunster was no exception. Thursday was devoted to the Eastern tongues by all classes in the programme of 1642. President Chauncy, whose Oriental scholarship had the respect of Archbishop Ussher,2 seems to have started freshmen right in on Hebrew; and it is not until Tutor Flynt's 'Particular Account,' in 1723, that we find evidence of freshmen being given a respite until 'the Latter part of the year.' The 'beginning Hebrew' book at Harvard was the Horologium Hebraeum of Wilhelm Schickard, Professor at the University of Tübingen, a manual which professed to teach students the elements of that sacred tongue in the surprisingly short space of hours.3 Two copies of the London (1639) edition and four copies of various Dutch editions have come down to us, full of inscriptions by Harvard students of the seventeenth century, beginning with the future President Hoar (A.B. 1650), and ending with Dudley Bradstreet (A.B. 1698). Schickard appears to have had no rivals in the early Cambridge textbook market as an introduction to the Holy Language; but there were several formal Hebrew grammars that Harvard students used, two of them in English: that of Martinius of Navarre 'all englished by I. Udall' as 'The Key of the Holy Tongue' (Leyden, 1593), and the 'Generali Grammar for the ready attaining of the Ebreu, Samaritan, Calde, Syriac, Arabic, and the Ethiopic Languages' (Berlin, 1650), by Dunster's correspondent, Christian Ravis. The others, like Schickard, were in Latin: Francois du Jon's Grammatica Hebraeae Linguae (Geneva, 1596) and the works of the two eminent Hebrew grammarians named Johann Buxtorf: the elder's Epitome Radicum Hebraicarum et Chaldaicarum (с. 1607), Thesaurus 1. Judges xii. 6. 2. F. H. C., pp. 90-91 n. 3. Horologium Hebraeum, sive Consilium, quomodo sancta lingua spacto xxiv. horarum ab aliquot Collegis sufficienter apprehendi queat. The first edition came out in 1623, and successive editions appeared for over a century.

204

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Grammaticus Linguae Sanctae Hebraeae (1629), and Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum (1646),1 and the younger's Dissertations Philologico-'Theologicae (1645). John Harvard's donation included several commentaries on the Old Testament, a Talmudic Aramaic lexicon, and John Lightfoot's 'Erubhin, or Miscellanies Christian and Judaicall,' which printed Rabbinic selections in the original Hebrew and in translation. Accordingly, Harvard students were well equipped to acquire not only a reading but a debating knowledge of Hebrew. At every Commencement there were one or more Hebrew subjects among the theses grammaticae; and Cotton Mather asserts that there were Hebrew orations as well, and occasionally one in Aramaic.2 Dunster writes to Ravis: Ά wonderfull impulse unto these studies lyes on the spirits of our students, some of which can with ease dextrously translate Hebrew, and Caldee, into Greek.' Schickard's promise to teach the rudiments of Hebrew in 24 hours was slightly over-confident; Harvard students spent one day a week for three years on Hebrew and the allied tongues. To the junior sophisters the President lectured every Thursday on ' Chaldee' (Aramaic), and in the afternoon heard them recite from Ezra and Daniel, which in the Hebrew Testament are in Aramaic, a language not very different from Hebrew. Thursday in senior sophister year was devoted to Syriac, which is simply Christian Aramaic, written in a different alphabet. The President lectured on Syriac grammar in the morning, and in the afternoon the seniors recited the Peshitta or Syriac Vulgate, for which the text was Trostius' edition of the Syriac New Testament.3 The principal, or perhaps the only, Hebrew text used by Harvard students was the Old Testament. About twelve copies have turned up with students' inscriptions dating from 1651 to 1. This and the Thesaurus were also in the library that John Harvard left to the College, as were copies of Schickard and Udall. 2. Nathaniel Mather at his graduation in 1685 delivered an oration in Hebrew, with which, says Cotton Mather, he was as familiar as if he expected shortly to have occasion for no other (Sibley, 111. 322). Cotton is suggesting that Hebrew is the language of Heaven! 3. Misprinted 'Trestius' in reprints of New Englands First Fruits. Novum Testamentum Syrtaci cum versione Latina, accesserunt in fine notationes collectae a Martino Trosiio is No. 8958 in the British and Foreign Bible Society's list of Printed Bibles. The text was prepared by Martin Trost, Professor of Theology at Wittenberg, and the book was published at Cöthen, Anhalt, in 1621-22.

G R E E K A N D HEBREW

205

1746. Most of them are handsome editions, by scholars such as Manasseh ben Israel, Arias Montanus, and Tremellius, printed at Antwerp or Amsterdam. George Phillips, the first minister of Watertown, brought over an Arias Montanus text with an interlinear Latin translation, printed by D e la Roviere at Geneva in 1619, which was used by his son Samuel and doubtless other members of the Class of 1650. Joseph Browne, fellowcommoner of 1666, had another copy of this edition sent out from London, at a cost of £115.Γ. 1 T h e Hebrew subjects on the Bachelors' Commencement theses are all on elementary points and truisms in Hebrew grammar. with the function of a point has the sound of all the vowels By contracting their sentences the Hebrews enlarge their meaning Points received on both sides of a letter remove sheva Any tense in Hebrew verbs expresses both times 2 Benoni (the participle) takes the place of the present, which is wanting in Hebrew 3 Aleph

Although President Chauncy was Dunster's equal if not his superior as a Hebraist, Hebrew had a much less important place in the 1655 and 1723 programmes than in that of 1642. There is not a single Hebrew topic in the theses and quaestiones that have been preserved for the period between 1653 and 1680. A t his Master's Commencement in 1681, Cotton Mather appears to have started a revival by arguing that the Hebrew vowel-points were of divine origin. 4 This was a question of great pith and moment for puritan divines. T h e Hebrew letters are all consonants; the expression of the vowels by points is of comparatively late origin. Hence Catholic theologians were wont to tease their Protestant rivals by asking them to state the distinction between vowel-points, the work of Hebrew editors, and glosses by learned doctors of the Church. Exactly where did the 'word of G o d ' end and 'human devices' begin? Michael Wigglesworth, for instance, was 'sadly assaulted . . . 1 . H . C . L . T h e P h i l l i p s c o p y w a s sold as a d u p l i c a t e , b u t a n o t e g i v i n g i t s h i s t o r y is p a s t e d i n t o the B r o w n e c o p y . R a v i s h i g h l y r e c o m m e n d s this edition in his Discourse Concerning the Easterne Tongues, p. 7 6 ( b o u n d u p w i t h h i s Generali Grammar). 2. 1646 theses g r a m m a t i c a e , nos. 3 , 5; 1 6 4 7 , 3. 1653 ( A u g . i o ) , no. 6. 4. A l s o in 1687 q u a e s t i o n e s , A p p e n d i x B .

nos-

6, 7 ·

2θ6

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

with doubting whether every word of the scripture were infallible . . . because of the points in the Hebrew.' 1 Protestant divines were driven to defend a weak philological case in order to protect their theology: it must be proved that Jehovah inspired every vowel-point as well as every letter. Hebrew reappears in the Commencement theses of 1687, but in the same elementary and matter-of-fact character that we have noted in all theses grammaticae of the Brattle and Leverett era. ' N o word can begin with a double sheva' is about as interesting as would be an English thesis to the effect that q is always followed by u. A curious thesis of 1689 is 'All the Hebrew letters may be found in one verse — Isaiah v. 25.' 2 Hebrew is omitted altogether from the two surviving thesis sheets of the 1690's, and does not reappear until 1719, with the very matter-of-fact proposition that 'In the Hebraic, Syriac, and Chaldaic languages there are no cases.' As early as Tutor Wigglesworth's time, pupils were wanting to drop Hebrew; 3 but there is no reason to believe that they were indulged. Even Samuel Vassall, son of a West Indian planter and a tremendous 'swell,' acquired in his freshman year a copy of Manasseh ben Israel's Biblia Hebraicay eleganti charactere impressa (Amsterdam, 1635). After his return to Jamaica in 1695, it passed through the hands of successive students for over a century, accumulating comments to the point where it had to be interleaved by its last undergraduate owner, Samuel Harris of the Class of 1810. And for those advanced students who wished to make a careful textual study of the Bible, there were two, and perhaps three, of the great Polyglots in the College Library, to which by the year 1680 there had been added a respectable number of Targums, Talmuds, and works of Rabbinic exegesis.4 The final examination for the baccalaureate consisted in 'sitting one's solstices' in the college hall, to be examined by all comers. The stanza for June in 'An Almanack of Coelestial Motions for the Year . . . 1679,' by John Foster (A.B. 1667), suggests that Harvard senior sophisters especially dreaded quesl. a. verse, 3. 4.

Ms. Diary (Μ. H. S.), October 1653. Theses grammaticae, no. i j . Neither sin nor the 'final letters' occur in that but they are not counted as separate letters. Sibley, I. 265-68. See Chapter XIV.

GREEK AND HEBREW

tions on Hebrew irregular verbs by learned gentlemen of the Board of Overseers: Apollo now stands still, wondring to see That Harvard into Charles should turned be, His standing probably before hand awes Those who must sit by force of solstice Laws, Defective Verbs wish he had never come Their down right halting (when they walk) to Doom.

But as we know few instances of eleventh-hour failures, it is probable that constant drilling in Ravis, Buxtorf, and Du Jon enabled the halting Hebraists to defeat impending doom.

Χ

MATHEMATICS AND

ASTRONOMY1

ARITHMETIC AND G E O M E T R Y

The cultivation of the mathematical sciences in seventeenthcentury Harvard was adversely affected by the bad example of her mother university. The association of Cambridge with Mathematics began only in the second half of the seventeenth century. 2 A t the time that Dunster and Chauncy were undergraduates, Arithmetic and Geometry were looked upon there as subjects fit for mechanics rather than men of learning; John Wallis, in 1655, had to leave the university for London, in order to find congenial spirits.3 Harvard maintained this indifference to Mathematics even longer than her mother university. During the seventeenth century only Arithmetic and Plane and Spherical Geometry were studied, and they only in senior sophister year. As late as 1725, the senior sophisters had to spend a month studying Arithmetic in order to qualify for Euclid. 4 Although Oughtred's Clavis Mathematicae came out before Harvard was founded, and Kersey's 'Elements of that Mathematical Art commonly called Algebra' appeared in 1673, there is no trace of Algebra in the Harvard curriculum until 1721, when elementary definitions and propositions in that ι . For this chapter I acknowledge the aid and advice of Mr. Frederick E. Brasch, Professor Julian L. Coolidge, the late Dr. Willard J. Fisher of the Harvard Observatory, Dr. George Sarton, and Professors Lao G. Simons, David Eugene Smith, and Dorothy Stimson. 2. Isaac Barrow, the teacher of Newton, matriculated in 1645. It is true that several competent mathematicians graduated from Cambridge before that date (e. g. Henry Briggs, William Oughtred, John Pell), but they were largely self-taught, and received no fellowships or other encouragement from their colleges. Cf. F . H. C., pp. 76-77, 124. 3. John Webster in his Academiarum Examen (London, 1654), p. 40 ff., states that all mathematical sciences are slightly and imperfectly handled in the universities; Arithmetic is left to merchants and mechanics; Geometry is slighted, and its practice and application are left to masons, surveyors, and the like. 4. President Wadsworth's Diary, С. S. Μ., χ χ χ ι . 452. Robert Recorde's Arithmetick (1658) is in the H. C . L . Catalogue of 1723, p. 91.

MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

209

branch first appear among the Bachelors' theses.1 Very few books specially devoted to Mathematics have come down to us from Harvard students' hands, and most of these were by the omniscient Petrus Ramus and the indefatigable Keckermann. Alsted's Encyclopaedia also contained much mathematical knowledge; but of course we cannot assume that students knew all that was contained in a college-library encyclopaedia. Although Arithmetic and Geometry are mentioned as senior sophister studies in ' N e w Englands First Fruits,' it is not until 1653 that we find mathematical theses on the Commencement broadsides.2 Then, and for fifty years thereafter, the Harvard theses mathematicae consisted largely of such obvious propositions as Prime numbers are indivisible by any factor In any triangle the greater side subtends the greater angle Nine notes or figures are the mathematical alphabet A cipher itself signifies naught 3

Occasionally we find a humorous touch, such as Ciphers give what they have not The Geometer is an angular scoundrel Parallel lines meet at the Greek Kalends 4

or one of the classic fallacies, such as Every circle is a polygon.3

Geometry at Harvard seems to have been read in English, probably because it was regarded as a practical subject, one which had better be learned in the vernacular. Henry Dunster when a student at Magdalene had acquired Ramus' Arithmeticae libri duo: Geometriae Septem et viginti, a handsomely illus1. But Rhonius' Introduction to Algebra, Translated out oj the High-Dutch into English, by Thomas Brancker (London, 1668), still in the H. C . L . , bears the inscription, 'This brave Book belongs to the Library of Harvard Colledge, Cantabr. N o v : Angl. 1683,' and bears evidence of heavy use by students. 2. N o theses are extant for 1648-51, and there probably were none in 1652. 3. 1653 (Aug. 9) theses arithmeticae, no. 5; theses geometriae, no. 5; 1670 theses mathematicae, no. 2; 1691, no. 4. 4. 1663 mock theses mathematicae, nos. 3, 5; 1670, no. 5. 5. 1687 theses mathematicae, no. 10.

2ΙΟ

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

trated quarto edited by Lazarus Schonerus.1 On the first page of the Geometry section of this book the President wrote: This work is written out and the reasons of the words given in my 2d assay 1649. Myne assay to teach Euclid and Ramus to speak English was at the first sight and reading thus written with purpose to ripen it on fuller thoughts. [Er]go many words I purpose to change when I find out as dayly experience teacheth better. Each Euclidian proposition that follows is translated in the margin by Dunster, using homely Saxon words: 'bigness' for magnitude, 'row' for linea? 'rim' for peripheria, 'crooked' for curvus, 'prick' for punctum, and the like. Out of this very book, then, the President compiled a 'system ' or synopsis of Geometry, in the manner we have seen employed by his pupils in several other Arts. Three years later he purchased for 30J a copy of the first English Euclid: 'The Elements of Geometrie of the most auncient Philosopher Euclide of Megara Faithfully (now first) translated into the Englishe toung, by H. Billingsley, Citizen of London. With a very fruitfull Praeface made by M[aster] I[ohn] Dee' (London, 1570).3 The geometrical diagrams employed by Billingsley are found in William Bedwell's translation of Ramus' Via Regia·. 'The Way to Geometry. Being necessary and usefull, For Astronomers, Geographers, Land-meaters, Sea-men, Engineres, Architecks, Carpenters, Paynters, Carvers, etc.' (London, 1636). The possession of this book in college by William Brinsmead (1655), and afterwards by Elisha Cooke (A.B. 1657) and his brother Joseph (A.B. 1660), suggests that President Chauncy continued to encourage the study of practical Geometry in English. 1. Frankfort, 1619. Prince Collection, B. P. L. Dunster purchased it for 8s 4J from Henry Moody, a Cambridge (England) bookseller. Another copy of the same work, but a later edition (Frankfort, 1627) at the A. A. S. contains copious notes by Cotton Mather, probably (but not certainly) written when he was in college. 2. Later he thinks 'stroke' or 'score' is a better word for linea, using 'row' for a broken line. 3. See G. B. Halsted, 'Note on the First English Euclid,' Am. Journ. Math., 11 (1879). 46-48, and W. F. Shenton, 'The First English Euclid,' Am. Math. Monthly, xxxv (1928). 505-12. Dunster's copy, which is in the Yale University Library, bears his autograph on the title-page: 'Henrici Dunsteri Liber pret. 1/ ioj 00 bought of Mr Pierce of Newhaven 1652.' Mark Pierce came to Cambridge in 1642, and soon after removed to New Haven, where he served as surveyor and schoolmaster, and returned to England in 1652-53. New Haven Town Records, 1. 60 η.; Η. F. Waters, Gen. Gleanings, I. 199; II. 1080.

MATHEMATICS PRACTICAL

AND

ASTRONOMY

SURVEYING AND

211

NAVIGATION

We have evidence that the presidential zeal for practical Geometry bore early fruit. In the summer of 1652, 'for the better discouerie of the north lyne' of the Bay Colony, commissioners were appointed by the General Court 'to procure such artists and other assistants as they shall judge meete to goe with them, to finde out the most northerly parte of Merimacke Riuer.' They were instructed to 'vse their vttmost skill and abillitie to take a true observation of the latitude of the place.' The 'artists' selected were Sergeant John Sherman of Watertown, 1 an amateur astronomer, and Jonathan Ince (A.B. 1650), who was working his way to his second degree by acting as servitor and President's secretary.2 It was Sir Ince and 'Sarjeant' Sherman who shot the sun when they reached the river outlet from Lake Winnepesaukee, and made an observation that was only about five miles out. For this exploit, each 'artist' received 'a daily stipend of ten shillings in the best pay of the country' for the nineteen days that the expedition was afield.3 If Harvard students were able to acquire enough knowledge for surveying, it is possible that those intending to follow the sea might have learned celestial navigation in college. An Amsterdam 1669 edition of the Mariner's Mirrour is in the College Library Catalogue of 1723; but the only treatise on navigation that has come down to us with marks of student usage is the Brevis Commentatio Nautica which Keckermann appended to his Systema compendia totius Mathematices."· In this manual the omniscient Danziger, observing that many of his pupils followed the sea, imparted to them the abstracted wisdom of the ancients on that subject, together with some surprising misinformation that he had picked up on the water front of his native city. The winds issue from caves, notably from a certain mountain in Provence; the movement of the 1. Cousin of the Rev. John Sherman. Ν. Ε. H. G. R., xxiv. 66-67. 2. He describes himself as 'Student of Harvard College' on the official return in the Public Record Office, calendared in Cal. State Pap. Colonial 1661-68, p. 301. 3. Sibley, I. 257-58. The rock on which their farthest north was recorded by the Commissioners is still to be seen at The Weirs. Their observation was 430 40' 12"; the correct latitude is 43е 36' 20*. 4. Peter Thacher (A.B. 1671 or 1696) owned a copy of the Oxford, 1661, edition of this work. It is now in the Prince Collection, B. P. L.

212

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

globe sends ships faster to America than they can return homeward; vessels enter port more quickly than they depart because they are sailing downhill, the sea being higher than the land; and more of the same sort. He also discusses why sails and ropes move the ship, argues syllogistically the problem whether the saltness of the sea helps or hinders navigation, and offers an outline of maritime history, the accuracy of which may be gauged by the fact that he confused Sebastian Cabot with Diego Cam and Francis Drake. 1 Toward the end of the century some of the mathematical Commencement theses suggest that plane surveying was taught to undergraduates.2 A letter written shortly after graduation by Joseph Green (A.B. 1695) to a seafaring brother, offering him instruction in navigation, suggests that by that time the lucubrations of Keckermann had been discarded in favor of some more practical manual on that highly useful art in a seafaring community. 3 A treatise on Mathematics and practical Astronomy that has been preserved in the Saltonstall family is possibly that very manual.4 The College Library in 1723 had several treatises on practical navigation of the previous century: the first edition of William Leybourn's Nine Geometricall ι . Ί grant you that the English seem to be effeminate men, given over to part-singing and other pleasures and japes; but in this make no mistake, they be very clever and ingenious in building and commanding ships among other things: for a certain studious Englishman named Sebastian Can skilled in astronomy and geometry circumnavigated the globe in six months, whence his phrase, primus me circumdedisti.' 2. ' T h e triangle is the basis of geodetical instruments' (1687 theses mathematicae, no. 12); 'Geodesy is practical geometry' (1689, no. 2). 3. Ms. Commonplace Book, H . C. L . , p. 109. 4. This is an illustrated manuscript on Mathematics written into a quarto 'paper book' of about 50 leaves; covers gone, and no indication of authorship or ownership. The format and diagrams resemble those of Charles Morton's Compendium Physical (see next chapter). But Dr. Sarton points out that the eclipse described of August 12, 1672 was purely a North American one; the table of Oblique Ascensions and Descensions is for the latitude of Boston; and two other tables are calculated for longitude 315, which is that of Boston Harbor on Captain John Smith's M a p of New England (cf. H . E . Ware, Ά Forgotten Prime Meridian,' C. S. M., x n . 398; x i n . 228). T h e book covers Arithmetic, Plane Geometry, simple problems of Navigation and Surveying, 8 pages O f Solids or Bodies' with applications for measuring timber and the like; and about 52 pages of practical Astronomy, including Trigonometry, and tables. Professor David Eugene Smith (see his description of it with facsimile in Scripta Mathematica, 11. 22123) believes that it is the work 'of a teacher or of a superior type of pupil,' and assigns 1680 as a tentative date. There is no evidence of its being used at Harvard; and although it may be the work of a progressive tutor like John Leverett (ancestor of the present owner) or William Brattle, it was more probably used in one of the private schools that flourished in Boston toward the close of the century.

ILLUSTRATIONS IN RAMUS'

GEOMETRY

COSMOGRAPHICAL

SCHEMES

IN

MORTON'S

COMPENDIUM

PHYSICS

MATHEMATICS A N D ASTRONOMY

213

Exercises for young Sea-men (London, 1669), 1 the folio Atlas Maritimus or Sea-Atlas (1675), a book of world charts by John Seller the Royal Hydrographer, 2 and a coast-pilot entitled The Lighting Colomne or Sea-Mirror (Amsterdam, 1669).3 All this is rather inferential. W e have no certain knowledge that surveying or navigation was part of the regular curriculum in the seventeenth century; conversely, we have good evidence that in President Oakes's time even a student with a talent for Mathematics found no instruction in college beyond Arithmetic. Thomas Brattle (A.B. 1676) wrote in 1703 to Flamsteed, the astronomer royal: I am here all alone by my self, without a meet help in respect to my studies as well as in the more common sense, and that little insight which I have in these matters, I have gotten it, as they say, proprio Marte, there never having been any one person here, that could give me any the least instruction, assistance or satisfaction in these studies. It's now near 30 yeares since I first begun to apply my self unto them at our College, but I may make ye same complaint which Dr Wyberd did of ye University of Oxford in his time, Eheu! quanta est illic apud academicos scientiarum Mathematicarum negligentia ас ignorantia! addictis illis potissimum notionali, probabili, suppositivae tantum disciplinae, putä philosophiae peripateticae, sive Aristotelicae Logicae, physicae, Metaphysicae &c. seposita ab illis verissimä μαθήσα ή μαθήματι кат' ίξοχήν dicto. . . . Upon all which considerations I would hope my slips and imperfections will obtain a more easy censure and pardon.. . . 4 A n d in a later letter he tells how he had been stumped by the fifth proposition of Euclid, in Barrow's Euclide's Elements,· how he searched in other books for a solution; and finally, in the Cursus Mathematicus of Gaspar Schott, discovered that the fifth proposition was the pons asinorum, which made him determined to cross it. T h a t done, the rest of Geometry came easy, and Trigonometry followed. 5 ι. H. C. L. Catalogue of 1723, p. 51. Leybourn (see D. N. B.) was a practical mathematician and professional surveyor, like Vincent Wing. 2. Id. 31. Seller's maps were mostly taken from Dutch atlases, but his English Pilot was standard for a century (D. N. В.). 3. Id. 21. A translation of Jacob Colom's De lichtende Columne ojte Zee-Spiegel (Amsterdam, 1639). 4. Dated Boston, 15 December, 1703. Archives of Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Copy communicated through the kindness of Mr. F. E. Brasch. 5. To Flamsteed, Feb. 8, 1705; ibid. Presumably this self-instruction took place shortly after Brattle graduated, for he compiled the Almanac for 1678, printed at Cam-

214

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY ASTRONOMY

1

Astronomy, the fourth part of the medieval Quadrivium, was the only subject in which the College made some contribution toward the advancement of learning, in the seventeenth century. Although regarded as a discipline distinct from Mathematics and Physics, no separate class of astronomical theses was made on the Commencement broadsides; and the few astronomical subjects found among the theses and quaestiones before 1687 are so vague as to tell us nothing,2 while those after 1686 are merely axioms of the New Astronomy. 3 But the mystic ' science' of astrology was a favorite target of Harvard disputants from 1653 to 1717, when the subject was closed with the proposition 'that Astrological conjectures are intolerable and must be utterly rejected.' 4 It was time, for Dean Swift had laughed astrology out of learned circles with his pretended Bickerstaff Almanac for 1708. Although Harvard was founded almost a century after the death of Copernicus, and three years after the Inquisition had given Galileo considerable publicity, President Dunster's pupils were probably not troubled by any astronomical theories unfamiliar to their grandfathers. This need not surprise us, when we consider how slowly spread the heliocentric hypothesis, the most disturbing of all modern discoveries both to common sense and to that Aristotelio-Thomist explanation of reality which Protestants held no less strongly than Catholics. 5 In Dr. Holdsworth's 'Directions for a Student in the Universitie' of Cambridge, completed by 1648, the only books on Astronbridge, and made observations of the eclipse of 1680, mentioned below. Brattle's copy of the Arithemetica Integra of Michael Stifel with a preface by Melanchthon (Nürnberg, 1544), which he acquired in 1683, is in the H. C. L . 1. There is a more detailed account of this subject in m y article, ' T h e Harvard School of Astronomy in the Seventeenth Century,' N . E . v n (1934). 3-24. 2. Aug. 10, 1653 theses physicae, no. 10; 1670 theses mathematicae, no. 8; 1674 quaestiones, no. 3; 1678 theses mathematicae, no. 11; 1678 quaestiones, no. 5; 1686 quaestiones, no. 3. 3. 1687 theses physicae, nos. 22-24, 26; 1691 theses mathematicae, nos. 12-16; 1693, nos. 7-9, etc. 4. Quaestiones, Aug. 9,1653, no. 4; 1693, no. 1 1 ; 1694, no. 3; 1678 theses mathematicae, no. 12; 1717, no. 22. I t was 'judicial' astrology — the astrology of mystic powers — that was generally condemned; 'natural' astrology, a rational attempt to discover the causal relation of heavenly bodies to natural phenomena, by implication was admitted. j . Dorothy Stimson, Tht Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican theory (1917).

MATHEMATICS AND ASTRONOMY

αϊ ζ

1

omy and Physics are Ptolemaic and Scholastic. Although the Savilian Professorship of Astronomy was established at Oxford in 1619, no disciple of Kepler was appointed until thirty years later.2 At the University of Paris it was not safe to praise Copernicus and defend his system until 1686; and in 1 7 1 1 , when Charles III of Spain requested his universities to modernize their teaching of science, Salamanca replied: 'Newton teaches nothing that would make a good logician or metaphysician, and Gassendi and Descartes do not agree so well with revealed truth as Aristotle does.'3 The works of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo were not omitted from the Roman Index of Prohibited Books until 1835.4 Harvard students, in Dunster's administration, learned little of the universe that Dante did not know. Our fixed and stable earth is the centre of all existence. About her atmosphere revolve nine transparent and concentric orbs, the 'crystal spheres,' which 'move in melodious time.' In each of the first seven heavens a single planet is embedded; the eighth heaven of the fixed stars, the firmament, is 'thick inlaid with patines of bright gold'; the ninth or primum mobile, diaphanous in substance and invisible to human eyes, but giving forth the deepest tone in the music of the spheres, revolves at incredible speed inside the tenth heaven, the immutable empyrean. There dwells God the prime mover, with all the glorious company of heaven and the souls of the blessed dead. Thence La gloria di Colui, che tutto muove Per l'universo penetra; e risplende In una parte piu, e meno altrove. Such, with a few additions and refinements, was the cosmogony presented as true in the first textbook of natural science used at Harvard College.5 But this blessed state of innocence did not last long. I. F. H. C., Chapter IV. 1. Seth Ward. But, charges John Webster in his Academiarum Examen (London, 1654, p. 42), Astronomy was taught didactically in both universities by the Peripatetic and Ptolemaic system. Some of the works of Riccioli, the Jesuit adversary of Galileo, and all belonging to the second half of the seventeenth century, are in the H. C. L . Catalogue of 1723. 3. George Ticknor, Hist, of Spanish Literature (1853), πι. 285. 4. Preserved Smith, History of Modern Culture, 1. 58. 5. Magirus' Physiologia Peripatetica, for an account of which see next Chapter. The latest astronomer mentioned by Magirus was Alfonso the Learned of Castile.

216

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ALMANACS

UNIVERSITY

AND THE N E W

ASTRONOMY

T h e Copernican system was well established at Harvard before the ' N e w England Almanack for 1659' appeared. Zechariah Brigden (A.B. 1657), who was studying for his second degree with the aid of a teaching fellowship, compiled this Almanac. He had access to a copy of the Astronomia Instaurata (1656) 1 of Vincent Wing, an English almanac maker and amateur astronomer who was the first to make available in English the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, and to publish ephemerides which made it possible for any fair mathematician to predict eclipses. Brigden begins his Almanac with a prediction, the fourth word of which challenged believers in the Old Astronomy: 'Twice shall this Planet whereon we live, and it's concomitant the Moon, widdow each other of their Sun-derived luster.' And he concludes with a brief but pithy exposition of the Copernican system, 2 which is the earliest extant scientific essay by a Harvard graduate. President Chauncy and Governor Winthrop of Connecticut were so pleased with this production that each sent a copy of the Almanac to John Davenport, at New Haven. Master Davenport, who had learned his astronomical theories at Oxford almost half a century before, pithily observed that Brigden was setting himself up as the eighth sage; that the authors cited (Galileo, Boulliau, Gassendi, Kepler, Wing) meant nothing to him; that we lived on a place, not a planet; and that Brigden had not satisfactorily answered the objections from Scripture. 'However it be,' he concludes, 'let him injoy his opinion; and I shall rest in what I have learned, til more cogent arguments be produced then I have hitherto met w i t h . ' 3 ι . The copy now in the H. C. L., bound up with Wing's Harmonicon Coeleste (1651), bears marks of ownership of Thomas Graves (A.B. 1656); of Samuel Brackenbury (A.B. 1664) and Joseph Browne (A.B. 1666) who compiled the New England almanacs for 1667 and 1669 respectively; and of Edward Holyoke (A.B. 1705), a later almanac maker. The H. C. L . had a copy of Wing's Astronomia Britannien (1669) in 1723, and now has one which bears the following inscription: 'Grindall Rawson [A.B. 1678] me suis addidit novembris. 23d: 1677 Johanni Leveretto vendidit j u l y 28 1681 Samuel Danforthus [A.B. 1683] a Waltero emit Decemb. 26. 1683 Quid Libri Sine Lectore?' 2. Ά breif Explication and proof of the Philolaick Systeme,' printed in N . E . vii. 9-12, which see (n. 22) for explanation of the title. 3. N. E. VII. 13.

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This tolerant agreement to disagree is the only recorded opposition to the Harvard radical. The New Astronomy, which had to fight the Church and the clergy in almost every other country, was propagated by the clergy in New England. Even before the Reverend Masters Samuel Danforth (A.B. 1643), Increase Mather ( A . B . 1 6 5 6 ) , and Cotton Mather ( A . B . 1 6 7 8 ) wrote their treatises on comets and other phenomena of popular science, the clerical Harvard Corporation, with a clerical President, watched over by clerical Overseers, sponsored these almanacs, which for the most part were composed by candidates for the ministry.1 Some of our almanac compilers were more eager to work off their own poetry than to write astronomical essays; 2 but an appreciable number carried on Brigden's good work in persuading the New England farmer that he lived on a revolving planet. Samuel Cheever (A.B. 1659) appended Ά breif Discourse of the Rise and Progress of Astronomy' to his Almanac for 1661. Nathaniel Chauncy ( A . B . 1 6 6 1 ) , the President's son, undertook to prove syllogistically in the Almanac for 1662 that the planets dance 'illipticall Sallyes, Ebbs and flowes' by reason of 'Magneticall Charmes' emanating from the sun. His classmate and younger brother Israel, in the Almanac for 1663, proved, by the theory of the refraction of light, that the Ptolemaic doctrine of translucent spheres was an impossibility. He conceded, however (quoting Alsted), that eclipses might be portents, even though produced by natural causes. Alexander Nowell, φιλόμουσο? (A.B. 1664), author of the Almanac for 1665, provides therein an essay called 'The Suns Prerogative Vindicated,' quoting observations by the 'optick tubes' or telescope as authority, and concluding with some remarks on the comet that appeared in December and January 1664-65.5 These were copied at length by John Josselyn and printed in his Two Voyages to New England (London, 1674).4 I. Cotton Mather, in describing Danforth's work in Magnalia, book iv. 155, waxes merry over the 'Astronomy of the Ancients,' but leaves offlest 'we should, before we are aware, play too much with the Beards of the Fathers' 1 . See Chapter VI. 3. The first month in the New England almanacs, as in the ecclesiastical calendar, was March; hence Nowell had opportunity to observe the comet in January before going to press. 4. Pages 47-52, duly credited to 'Alexander Nowel a young studient at HarvardColledge.' Also printed in Sibley, 11. 149-51.

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY Those curious to follow the further development of this popular science may find similar essays scattered through the New England almanacs from 1674 t o the end of the century. 1 These almanacs were the most widely diffused form of literature, and the only periodical literature, in New England. We must admit that the youthful compilers did not write in the style or manner best calculated to make the New Astronomy popular. There were too many Latin quotations, and too much allusiveness, for an unlearned audience. Nevertheless, their drift was unmistakable; and the knowledge that the pious and learned presidents of Harvard College sponsored this new interpretation of the cosmos as consistent with Holy Writ, must have given the New Astronomy impeccable authority, in the minds of New England church members. For many years, it seems, Harvard undergraduates knew Galileo, Kepler, and Gassendi only through the medium of Wing and Heereboord. But Cotton Mather as a sophomore acquired Gassendi's Exercitationes paradoxicae adversus Aristoteleos (Amsterdam, 1669); 2 and early in 1676 Thomas Shepard, who graduated that year, acquired for the sum of 7s 6d a copy of the first London edition (1653), illustrated, of Gassendi's Institutio Astronomica, Juxta Hypotheses tam Veterum quam Recentiorum, cui accesserunt G A L I L E I G A L I L E I Nuntius Sidereus, I. Notably, in the almanac for 1674 'Compiled by J. S.' (John Sherman, Ince's companion on the trip to Winnepesaukee, or Jeremiah Shepard, A.B. 1669), in a postscript of which we find 'From Kepler that vigilant and ingenious Mathematician, later Astronomers have received, and are of opinion, that the Planets move in an Ellipsis'; remarks in the Almanac for 1681 by John Foster (A.B. 1667), the Boston printer, ' O f Comets, Their Motion, Distance and Magnitude,' together with Thomas Brattle's Observations of a Comet seen this last Winter 1680, and how it appeared at Boston'; Ά Description of the Last Years Comet' in Cotton Mather's Boston Ephemeris for 1683; a page on lightning and thunder in the Cambridge Ephemeris for 1684 by Noadiah Russell (A.B. 1681); 'Concerning a Rainbow' ibid, for 1685 by William Williams (A.B. 1683); Ά short view of the Discoveries that have been made in the Heavens with, and since the invention of the Telescope,' and a briefer account written with special reference to converting the ignorant, together with two pages on sun-spots, the craters in the moon, and the rings of Saturn (quoting Hook and Huygens), in the Boston Ephemeris for 1685 and 1686 by Nathaniel Mather (A.B. 1685); a long poem with Copernican allusions by Samuel Danforth (A.B. 1683) in The New-England Almanack for 1686; Ά Postscript Exhibiting somewhat Touching the Earth's Motion,' quoting 'the exquisite Observations of the Industrious Monsieur A z o u t ' and John Wallis on the tides, in Henry Newman (A.B. 1687), Harvard's Ephemeris, or Almanack for 1690; O f Telescopes,' a summary of discoveries like that of Nathaniel Mather, in Newman's News from the Stars, An Almanack}or 1691. i . His copy is in the A. A . S.

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COMPASS

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PHYSICS

49

anything printed up to that time in the English language. Morton, moreover, was the principal agent for spreading in New England the scientific discoveries of the 'century of genius,' and preparing people for the 'century of enlightenment.' His book was the first to inculcate among Harvard students that observing and curious attitude toward the physical world which, in modern times, marks the educated man. Among earlier graduates there had been a few amateur astronomers, but none to show an intelligent interest in the minerals, fauna, flora, and native races of the New World. In the near future we find a number of Harvard men who had read Morton in college observing nature, collecting specimens, and corresponding with the virtuosi of England. 1 Paul Dudley, for instance, graduated M.A. in 1693 a t the tender age of seventeen. He later read law at the Inner Temple, and became Attorney General and Chief Justice of Massachusetts Bay. In the midst of a busy professional life he sent to the Royal Society (of which he was elected a Fellow) 2 a veritable stream of communications on maple sugar, moose, poison sumach, the pioneer method of finding bee trees, Niagara Falls, whales, earthquakes, and the manners and customs of the Indians. T H E S E S ON T H E N E W

PHILOSOPHY

This change of attitude toward the physical world is first evident in the theses physicae of 1687, the earliest after Morton's coming that have been preserved. Newton's Principia appeared that very year; but the sudden flare of modern science at Harvard was kindled by the Mortonian candle rather than the Newtonian sun. There are thirty-seven physical theses for 1687,3 at least three-quarters of them modern. Two of the five subjects of debate, 'Gravity is the attracting force of the Earth' and 'Luminous rays are corpuscular,' were derived from the Compendium Physicae; the few that were not may well have been suggested by the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. The more challenging theses of 1687 a r e : ι . For the Classes 1690-1700, see in Sibley, iv, the accounts of John Winthrop, F . R . S., Joseph Lord, and Daniel Henchman. And the best contributions of the Mathers to science belong to the period after Morton's arrival in New England. 2. Sibley, iv. 54. 3. See Appendix B.

2ζο

HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

All motion tends to a straight line There are submarine mountains and valleys Generation is the beginning of corruption Fishes breathe by attraction and repulsion of air Sight, hearing, taste and smell are forms of touch Dense bodies reflect light, the less dense absorb it Sound is nothing other than the movement of a real body The spots of the moon arise from unequal density of the parts The elements are the foundations of synthesis and analysis Rarefaction is not augmentation, nor condensation diminution The physical theses and quaestiones, moreover, show that other modern influences were at work besides Morton. The author of the Compendium Physicae, for all his admiration of Boyle, was distinctly cold toward Boyle's atomist or corpuscular hypothesis. Boyle had attempted a synthesis of Gilbert's magnetism, Gassendi's atomism, and Descartes' vortices which explained the universe in terms of 'corpuscles' (molecules) either at rest or whirling about as 'effluvia.' This hypothesis included the existence of vacuum, which Morton still denied. Now, one of the Harvard theses physicae of 1687 (no. 30) marked for debate is: 'The Magnet acts not from occult power, but from objective effluvia'; and Nathaniel Mather (A.B. 1685), the younger brother of Cotton, at his Master's Commencement in 1688 not only defended the existence of a vacuum, 1 but in his arguments, 'as well as by other Memorials and Experiments left behind him in Manuscripts, . . . gave a Specimen of his Intimate Acquaintance with the Corpuscularian (and only right) Philosophy.' 2 That the younger Mathers were so early converted to the 'Corpuscularian Philosophy,' which Ralph Cudworth had recently denounced as the basis of atheism 3 and which even Morton refused to accept, proves that Morton did not hold the field of science alone. It seems highly probable that the 'corpuscularian' missionary was his old Wadham College friend and Newington Green neighbor, Samuel Lee, who also came to Boston in 1686 and there printed his Joy of Faith and other popular 1. 1688 quaestiones, no. 3. 2. Cotton Mather, Early Piety, Exemplified in the Life and Death of Mr. Nathanael Mather (London, 1689; also in Magnolia, book iv. 208), quoted in Sibley, i n . 323. Nathaniel died at the age of nineteen, about three months after commencing M . A . 3. N. E. D., 'corpuscularian,' quot. for 1678.

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manuals of devotion, illustrated by references to modern science. Lee lived in Boston, mingling with the Mathers' circle, until April 1687; and he was invited to preside at Harvard Commencement in 1688.1 Certainly from 1687 the modern note prevails in Harvard theses physicae. Many of them, for years after 1687, might have been derived from the Compendium Physicae, although, if challenged, the senior sophisters would have wanted more arguments than Morton afforded them. For instance, 'The nature of cold consists of lack of movement' (1689) was probably marked for debate because Boyle's 'Experimental History of Cold' was available. We need not be surprised at also finding marked for debate in 1689 the baleful Danlur Feneficia (witchcraft exists), followed by the proposition 'Witchcraft is made by an impious pact of men with demons.' These are the reverse of the medal: interest in witchcraft went along with scientific curiosity; it was an objective phenomena to be studied and dealt with like disease.2 But for the most part, our physical theses and quaestiones deal with heat, light, motion, gravity, magnetism, the conservation of matter, mechanics, and other topics common to modern science.3 With the help of Charles Morton's little manual, Harvard College had pulled through the bogs of scholastic physics; and the time was not far distant when her sons would make significant contributions to experimental science. ι . See Chapter X X I I . Samuel Lee (1625-1691) was the author of several important works on historical chronology and attempted syntheses between science and theology after the manner of Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton. He wrote Chronicon Castrense (printed as part of Daniel King, Vale-Royal, 1656); Orbis Miraculum; or, the Temple of Solomon (London, 1659), on Hebrew antiquities; Contemplations on Mortality (London, 1669; Boston, 1690 and 1698); and Great Day of Judgement, a sermon preached at Bristol in 1687, was printed at Boston in 1692 with Preparatory Meditations on the same subject by Cotton Mather, on whose scientific thought he had much influence. Lee, after several months' residence in Boston, became minister of Bristol, R . I., in April 1687, whence he addressed an interesting letter on the Indians to Dr. Nehemiah Grew, which is printed with observations by George Lyman Kittredge in C. S. M., x i v . 142-86. On a voyage to England in 1691, Lee was captured by a French corsair and taken to St. Malo, where he died. A catalogue of his remarkable library was printed by the Boston bookseller who had it for sale in 1693. I am indebted to Dr. Hornberger, for calling my attention to Lee's significance. 2. See below, Chapter X X I I I . 3. E. g. 1688 quaestiones, nos. 3 , 6 , 9; 1691 theses physicae, nos. 12, 1 3 , 1 8 - 2 1 , 25, 26, and two unnumbered in capitals; 1693, nos. 7 , 9 , 1 0 , 1 2 , 1 7 , 1 8 , 21-23; quaestiones, nos. 8, 13. Similar propositions are found in the Commencement sheets to the second third of the next century. For similar ones at Yale in 1718, see N . E . ij>., v. 515.

XII METAPHYSICS AND MORAL

PHILOSOPHY1

METAPHYSICS

Metaphysics appears to have been forgotten by the author o f ' N e w Englands First Fruits' in his description of the curriculum in 1642. It must certainly have been there, since we find theses metaphysicae on the Commencement sheets from 1642 to 1647 inclusive, and individual theses on Prime Philosophy scattered among other classifications during the second half of the century. According to the College Laws of 1655, Metaphysics was an 'exercise' for senior sophisters; and in Tutor Flynt's 'Particular Account' of 1723, we find that a 'System of Metaphysicks' is recited by junior sophisters. In both instances it comes after Physics, as in the Rhodian arrangement of the Aristotelian canon made some eighteen centuries earlier. Aristotle, the founder of Metaphysics, was unquestioned as an authority on that subject, in early Harvard. The discipline was defined as he conceived it: Prime Philosophy, or first principles. It was roughly equivalent to Ontology, and, until the influence of Descartes and Locke became paramount, included neither Psychology nor Epistemology, which seventeenth-century Harvard regarded as belonging respectively to Physics and to Logic. Heereboord, in his Consilium de Ratione Studendi Philosophia, or Advice on Studying Philosophy, warns students against reading the unglossed text of Aristotle's Metaphysica, a 'chaos of all things, no connection, no order, all confusion.' He recommends Burgersdicius' Institutiones Metaphysicae 'in the last edition revised by m e ' ; and at least one Harvard student took the hint. Others between 1660 and 1722 owned the Primae Philosophiae Institutiones of an exiled Aberdonian, Gilbert Jack, dedicated (doubtless in the hope of ' adoption') I. Professors litienne Gilson and Harry A . Wolfson have given me much assistance in writing this Chapter.

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to the Estates of Holland and West Friesland. Jack's chapter headings — Being, Unity (transcendental, numeral, individual, formal, universal), Truth, Falsehood, Good, Evil, Cause (material, efficient, efficient first cause), Will, Creation, Conservation, End, Substance, Quantity, Place, Time, Motion, and the rest — follow the traditional Aristotelian-Thomist classification. Other digests of Scholastic Metaphysics formerly in the hands of Harvard students were the Enchiridion Metaphysicum of Caspar Bartholin of Copenhagen, 1 and manuals by the inevitable Keckermann and by Maccovius, the learned Pole of Franeker. T h e metaphysical section of Eustachius' Summa Philosophiae seems to have enjoyed considerable vogue, in view of the many Commencement theses that may be traced to it. Joseph Cooke (A.B. 1660), a few days before his graduation 'suis addidit' the Metaphysicae Disputationes of Suarez, the great Jesuit theologian. T h e metaphysical Commencement theses, as we might expect from such books, are concerned with the most elementary and general principles of Scholastic Metaphysics: Metaphysical Good admits of no degree Truth is intellectual conformity with Substance 2 Wherever there is passive power, there is matter 3 A separate classification for metaphysical theses was abandoned before 165J; and in the theses technologicae of 1678 we find marked for debate: 'There is no Metaphysics distinct from other disciplines.' 4 One might ascribe to Hobbes's Leviathan 5 this elimination of ι . Printed in the appendix to many editions of Magirus' Physiologia. 2. 1642 theses metaphysicae, no. 4; 1643, N O · 5· The second is the formula describing the correspondence between theory and truth which occurs in various forms throughout medieval philosophy. The phrasing here seems to indicate the influence of Eustachius' Summa Philosophiae (1648 ed.), part iv. 36: 'Veritas in genere describi potest, Conformitas seu adaequatio rei et intellect's.' 3. 1647, n o · 5> 'Ubi potentia passiva, ibi materia.' Potentia activa is free of matter; potentia passiva is in matter. С f. Aquinas, Summa, part i. Q. XLI. art. iv. ad. 2: 'Sequitur potentiam passivam, quae non est in divinis,' and idem. Q. XLVI. art. i. ad. 1 : ' N o n quidem secundum potentiam passivam, quae est materia: sed secundum potentiam activam Dei.' 4. N o . ι J. Repeated in 1687, no. 11, and 1708, no. 19; and on all three occasions marked for debate. 5. Metaphysics and Theology were omitted from his classification of the Sciences in Leviathan (1651), part i. 9. С f. Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy, the first Section, Concerning Body (London, 1656), part i. ch. i. § 8.

254

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M e t a p h y s i c s from the scope of Philosophy and the A r t s , if a n y other Hobbesean influence could be discerned in seventeenth-century H a r v a r d ; but it is much more likely a concession to William Ames. T h a t learned puritan wrote a Disputatio Theologica adversus Meiaphysicam·,1 he would h a v e it t a u g h t , like E t h i c s , as a branch of T h e o l o g y . Nevertheless, H a r v a r d still teaches M e t a p h y s i c s as a separate discipline, according to the College L a w s of 1655; and plenty of metaphysical theses are to be found on H a r v a r d C o m m e n c e m e n t sheets from 1653 on, although under other headings, especially the logical, technological, and physical. 2 I f some of these h a v e a modern sound, it is because they ask questions that the Schoolmen posed, and which we are still endeavoring to answer: Form does not mould merely the matter, but the composite object Space and Time are mere logical abstractions Time does not really exist, but is a measure of existence.3 In the mock theses of 1663 there are a number of sprightly metaphysical subjects among the logical theses: End is the prime mover of all causes Matter is the cathedra of Form, Form the bishop of Matter Substance is the Inn of Accidents Subject is the supporter of Attributes Universals are little stars, ever shining in themselves but invisible in the concrete T h i s last subject is not the only evidence w e h a v e t h a t H a r v a r d students were still concerned w i t h the first problem of Scholastic Philosophy, that of universals or general c o n c e p t s — the question posed b y old P o r p h y r y over which scholars had been arguing for seven or eight centuries before H a r v a r d w a s founded, and which the Catholic universities are still debating today. 4 T h e v e r y first of our theses logicae, in 1642, w a s : 'Universale do not exist outside the m i n d . ' 5 A n d as late as 1 7 1 1 w e h a v e : 'Universale are really things prior to any operation o f 1. Printed in his Philosophemata. 2. All those on the soul are among the theses physicae. 3. Aug. 10, 1653 theses logicae, no. 6; 1678, no. 12; 1687 theses physicae, no. 11. 4. See F. H. C., pp. 1 1 - 1 2 , and James J. Walsh, Education of the Founding Fathers (19З5). ΡΡ·.3ί?-7°· J . Denied in 1682 quaestiones, no. 2, but reaffirmed in 1708 theses logicae, no. 9.

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the intellect.' 1 T h e first is conceptualist, the second realist; but the positions taken by the disputants on this problem in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries no longer had any significance. The problem of universale was a dead or dormant issue, and disputations on it were mere exercises. Harvard students could have found all that they needed for that purpose in Eustachius ä S. Paulo. 2 T h e same is true of the theses on Being, such as: Being qua Being is the object of Metaphysics Non-Being is not the cause of Being 3 Than Being there is naught earlier, simpler, better, or more true Non-being can only be apprehended by reason and the grace of Being 4 There are preserved the exact words in which one of the favorite Scholastic metaphysical theses, Anima rationalis creatur (the reasoning mind, or soul, is created), was discussed at Commencement, 165ο. 5 Our unknown respondent (William Stoughton, perhaps, or the future President Hoar, or one of the long-lived Hobarts of Hingham) began by defining the rational mind or soul as 'Spiritus nempe substantialis quo homo intellegit et vult.' It does not exist from all eternity; it is not made from the same substance as God, or from any preexisting celestial material; nor is it created by angels, nor by metempsychosis from one to the other; nor is it true that there exists but one soul that animates and moves all men at the same time. The soul is created by God Almighty immediately, and out of nothing, neither outside nor anterior to the body, but within the body when already formed and organic. Almost all the definitions, propositions, arguments, and illustrative quotations from Pythagoras and Cicero in this dissertation, 1. 1 7 1 1 theses logicae, no. 12. 2. Summa, 1648 ed., part i, 22-41. 3. 1643 theses m e t a p h y s i c a e , no. 1; A u g . 10, 1653 theses technologicae, no. ζ ; cf. Aristotle, Metaphysica, v i . i. 1026a, 3 1 - 3 2 . 4. 1643 theses m e t a p h y s i c a e , no. 2; 1693 theses technologicae, no. 7. 5. M s . N o t e b o o k o f M i c h a e l Wigglesworth ( Ν . Ε . H . G . S., enlarged p h o t o s t a t a t H. C. L . ) , fols. 38-39. It is dated on C o m m e n c e m e n t , July 30, 1650. T h e identical thesis, Anima Rationalis Creatur, is found among the 1670 theses p h y s i c a e , n o . 8, m a r k e d for d e b a t e , as is a similar thesis of 1647 (no. 15) not m a r k e d for debate. C f . A u g . 9, 1653, no. i c , and quaestiones for 1655, 1663, 1664, 1675, ! 6 8 l , 1682, 1689, a n d 169З· T h e salutation in the dissertation copied b y Wigglesworth shows that it w a s a c t u a l l y spoken at C o m m e n c e m e n t .

2ξ6

H I S T O R Y OF H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y

seem to have been derived from that Italian Protestant divine whose works John Harvard left to the College Library: Girolamo Zanchi, or Zanchius. In fact the dissertation is little more than a good recitation on Zanchi de Operibus Dei intra spacium sex dierum creatis opus,1 such as any modern undergraduate might write in an examination, if asked to 'give a digest of Zanchi's argument that the human soul is created.' METAPHYSICAL

QUAESTIONES

Most of the questions debated at the Masters' Commencements before 1670 were metaphysical. This does not necessarily mean that Harvard graduates devoted much time to that subject. It may indicate that Presidents Dunster and Chauncy were endeavoring to revive the ancient practice of devoting the three years between the two Arts degrees largely to Philosophy; or that, after a brief undergraduate review of the subject, Metaphysics was studied, as Ames wished it to be studied, in connection with Theology. But the most simple explanation of the large number of metaphysical quaestiones is their suitableness for discussion and debate. Professor fitienne Gilson, who has kindly examined for me the Harvard quaestiones, reports that' the general inspiration is distinctly Scholastic, and most of them would still today be upheld by a Neo-Thomist.' But there were two points on which the Harvard inceptors took a decidedly Augustinian line. One was on the composition of angels: Whether Intelligences be material? They be.2 Whether Angels have Matter and Form? They have.3 Whether any Created Substance is Immaterial? It is. 1. Especially to part iii. lib. ii. cap. ii, de Animat to which there is a reference on the margin of the thesis; also caps, iv-vi. See 3d ed. (1602), pp. 705, 744, 756, 760, 765, 7 7 3 - 7 5 , 778, 785-86, 827, for the source of the Harvard respondent's arguments. He also refers in the margin to 'Conim. de Gene. lib. i. Cap. 4. 2. 13.,' probably a commentary of the Doctors of Coimbra on Aristotle de Generatione et Corruptione. 2. 1656 quaestiones, no. 4; cf. Eustachius έ S. Paulo, Summa (1648), 'Metaphysica,' p. 56: 'Quas Philosophi vocant Intelligentias, к praestantissima ipsarum operatione, Theologi, non quidem naturae sed officii nomine, Angelas, h. e. nuncios sive missos, appellant.' 3. 1682, no. 3. Cf. 1693, no. 14. Other angelic quaestiones are in 1678, no. I; 1700, no. I; 1702, no. 3.

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Moses Fiske provided a neat 'tripos verse' on this last quaestio, at his Master's Commencement, 1665: 1 What man possessed of sense or reason, would suppose that the Angelic Nature, and minds, were bound by this law (that everything created must be material)? True it is that Spirits have neither flesh nor bones. Then what matter will you assign to the Spirits? From four causes every effect ariseth, 'tis certain;® that created things are not mere gestures, 'tis clear; therefore, These material things are nevertheless immaterial; And things without matter are none the less material. T h e nature of angels had been a fierce controversy in the Middle Ages. T h e Harvard inceptors seem consistently to have taken the Augustinian and Franciscan view (which Calvinists would naturally have supported), against the Dominican andThomist; but with nothing save the titles, and these few verses, we have no means of knowing how deeply they went into the subject. Probably their arguments were compiled from the works of Augustine and Duns Scotus in the College Library. 3 Someone appreciated the Subtle Doctor in early Harvard, for his portrait hung in Old Harvard Hall until it was destroyed by fire.4 Still other quaestiones deal with the principle known as Concursus Dei (taken up by Descartes and Spinoza after the Schoolmen), according to which every action of created beings is caused by the immediate action of God. Elnathan Chauncy so argued at his Master's Commencement; 5 and others went further than he in denying that concursus as to the prime cause left man any liberty as to the second. 6 T h e old question whether the intellect and the will are really distinct faculties finds a place on the Masters' programme in 1660; and four 1. For the original, see Appendix B . From carelessness, or want of space, the printer omitted the 'ergo' before the last two lines. Translation by Professor Mason Hammond. 2. An allusion to Aristotelian causation. 3. Eustachius ä S. Paulo takes the Thomist view. 4. C. S. M., x v . p. xviii. 5. 1664 quaestiones, no. 3. .6. 1678 quaestiones, no. 2; 1683, no. 1. These questions are discussed in Heereboord's Meletemata and Burgersdicius' Institutions Metaphysicae. The H . C . L. Catalogue of 1723 contains (p. 44) 'Dola (Ludov. a) De Concursu Dei et creaturae Disputatio. Lugdun. 1634.'

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years later appears the Platonic notion that there is an idaea (archetype) of all beings in the first Being. Descartes' ' Meditations on Prime Philosophy/ new wine for the old metaphysical skins, was in circulation among Harvard students from 1658; but the earliest reflection of it that I find in the Masters' quaestiones comes in 1690: Whether doubt 1 be the beginning of indubitable philosophy ? Yes T h e Cartesian definition of the soul is rejected in 1692,2 and a defence of 'innate ideas' in 1703 may be due to the influence of Descartes, or of Locke, or of neither. Hence, as far as we can judge from the quaestiones, the influence of Descartes on Harvard Metaphysics was negligible. T h e College made a counter-Cartesian move in 1686, by adopting as a textbook the Enchiridion Metaphysicum of Dr. Henry More, the Cambridge Neo-Platonist. Tutor William Brattle made a manuscript abstract from it, which his pupils copied for their own use.3 When he wrote this work, in 1670-71, More was on his way to Neo-Platonic mysticism, denouncing Cartesianism (which formerly he had praised extravagantly) as inimical to religion; and to some extent he relied upon spurious forms of the supernatural. 4 It is surprising to find this work congenial to the cool and clear-headed Brattle. POLITICS

Moral Philosophy, as understood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, included Economics, Politics, and Ethics; Aristotle was the authority for all three. Of Economics there is no trace in the Harvard curriculum of the seventeenth century; 5 but according to ' N e w Englands First Fruits' President Dunster lectured to junior sophisters on 'Ethicks and Politicks at convenient distances of time,' Mondays and Tuesdays at nine in the morning. Politics is mentioned neither in the Laws 1. Duhitatio, which may however be the Aristotelian τό θαυμάζαν (wonder), not the Cartesian 'doubt.' 2. Quaestiones, no. J. 3. Copy in the Μ. H. S., made by George Curwin (A.B. 1701) in 1700. It is bound up with Brattle's abstract of More's Enchiridion Ethicum. 4. F. J. Powicke, Cambridge Platonists, pp. 158-59. 5. Except that Tutor Flynt earned his M.A. in 1696 by arguing the modern side of the question 'Whether any sort of Usury [interest] be licit?'

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of 1655 nor in the programme of 1723; but Ethics remained an integral part of the Arts course until the elective system was adopted. President Dunster's lectures on Politics probably consisted of readings from Aristotle's great manual of political wisdom. N o text of the Politico, with marks of early Harvard usage has come down to u s ; 1 and among the large number of students' books that have been recovered, only one appertains to this subject. T h a t was a compendium, printed at Paris in 1568, of Francesco Patrizi de Institutione Reipublicae, and of Erasmus' Instilutio Principis Christiani N o political topics among the Bachelors' Commencement theses have been found; 3 but around 1688 the M . A . candidates began to choose political subjects for their quaestiones. Thomas Dudley, son of the Governor, argued that Temporal Dominion was not founded on Grace; Benjamin Lynde, later bencher of the Middle Temple and Chief Justice of Massachusetts B a y , declared that human laws bind the conscience; Nicholas Morton denied that indifferent matters (on which the Bible did not clearly pronounce) were suitable subjects for human legislation. 4 T h e next year there were quaestiones 'Whether duels are licit?' 'Whether stratagems in war are illicit?' and 'WThether an atheist should be granted a trial?' all three being answered in the negative. In 1698 Walter Price, who had just returned from the grand tour, argued that Monarchical Government was Best (one imagines him offensively superior to his untravelled classmates); an inceptor the following year declared Salus populi est suprema lex; and a classmate of Price argued that Beggars should not be Tolerated in the Body Politic — good puritan and Pauline doctrine. Such subjects were not necessarily the results of any academic discipline; they may well have been chosen by candidates for the second degree who were not interested in academic subjects. But there is such a curious collection of sixteenthand seventeenth-century works on political theory in the Col1. The H. C. L. Catalogue of 1723 has two Greek texts, one with Latin translation and an English translation from the French of 1589. 2. The two works on which Sir Thomas Eliot's Gooertiour (1531) was modelled. Patrizi (d. 1494^ Bishop of Gaöta, is not to be confused with the Florentine Neo-Platonist of the same name. 3. Except no. l o i n the mock theses ethicae of 1663:' King, Law and People are the constituents of a State.' 4. 1688 quaestiones, no. I; 1689, nos. 1, 3.

200

HISTORY OF H A R V A R D U N I V E R S I T Y

lege Library Catalogue of 1723 1 as to suggest that some benefactor of the College, half a century or more earlier than Thomas Hollis, wished Harvard students to sharpen their wits on the theory of the State. ETHICS

Ethics at Harvard is a different story. A b o u t the year 1600 there was much controversy among reformed theologians as to the relation between Ethics and Theology. William Ames in his Medulla endeavored to make Ethics, like Metaphysics, a department of Protestant Theology. 2 There could be no principles of good and evil different or apart from the revealed Word; Ethics should be approached and taught as a part of Christian doctrine, and its principles sought exclusively in the Bible. This would seem to have been the logical position for a Protestant reformer to take; but despite the puritans' reverence for Ames, Harvard College followed Bartholomäus Keckermann. T h e learned Danziger argued that Ethics and Theology ought not to be confounded, since their ends are different. Theology is concerned with the absolute, with virtues and the spiritual grace that lead to eternal felicity, whilst Ethics is concerned with practical civic and social virtues, which may exist even under an infidel government where the true Word is unknown. Civic virtues, although incomplete without divine grace, are none the less real virtues, as dawn is real light. Further, Theology is a working, not a contemplative, discipline, for which we first fix the end and the means to the end, a method not proper for Ethics. 3 T h e early theses ethicae at Harvard implicitly agreed with Keckermann, not Ames; and that position was explicitly adopted in the first ethical thesis 1. Bodin de Republica (Paris, 1586) and 'Six Bookes of a Commonweale done into English by R. Knolles' (London, 1606); the Republicas del Mundo of Hieronymo Roman; Campanella's Realis Philosophiae epilogisticae partes quatuor (Frankfort, 1623), including his famous Civitas Solis; Grotius de Jure Belli ac Pacts (1651), de Imperio Summarum Potestatum (1648), and other works; the Vindtciae contra Tyrannos (1579); George Lawson's Examination of Hobbs his Leviathan (1657); Macchiavelli's Disputatio de Republica (1599); Trajano Boccalini's Pietra del Paragone politico (1653); and Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacts (1692). 2. Also in his Disputatio Theologica de Perfectione SS. Scripturae, which is in the Philosophemata (Amsterdam, 1651). 3. Alexander Schweizer, articles on Ames and Keckermann in the Herzog-Plitt Real-Encyklopädie, 1. 335-37; v n . 632-34.

CURRICULUM: M O R A L PHILOSOPHY

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marked for debate at Commencement, which has been preserved. Ethics is a conception distinct from Theology.1 Keckermann's own Systema Ethicae (included in his complete works, a possession of several Harvard students) was Aristotelian, as were all the other textbooks on Ethics to which the students are known to have had access. Of these, the more common were the Ethica of that obscure Cistercian, Eustachius ä S. Paulo, 2 and Francesco Pavone's Summa Ethicae (1633). For the ethical books of Aristotle, the students had a good Greek text with Latin translation and commentary in Magirus' Corona Virtutum (1628), and an excellent epitome of the Greek text, with a Latin translation, by Theophilus Golius, the younger Winthrop's professorial friend at Leyden. 3 From Golius' Epitome, for the most part, are taken the ethical theses in the manuscript of Jonathan Mitchell (A.B. 1647).4 Increase Mather, in later life, told the story of bringing his Golius to Master John Norton on a Sunday evening, in order to obtain the assignment for the following day; but Norton thought it unseemly ' to entertain Meditations or Discourses Heterogene-

ous to the work of the Day.'

5

Prudence, first of the Aristotelian virtues, appears in our earliest Commencement theses 6 as the most difficult virtue of all to practise — undoubtedly so, for youth! But for the most part the Harvard ethical theses are mere copy-book maxims that may have come from any one of a number of ancient authors or phrase-books. Liberty is the cause of vices He is abstinent who is continent It is better to love than to be loved ι . 1670, no. ι . B u t this is denied in 1687 theses technologicae, no. 12; and that Ethical Virtues are true Virtues is denied in 1697 quaestiones, no. 2. 2. Reprinted in London as late as 1693; the H a r v a r d student's copy is an edition of 1654. Eustachius' Ethica is also included in his Summa Philosophiae. 3. Theophilus Golius, Epitome doctrinae moralis, ex decern libris Ethicorum Aristotelis; cf. F.H. C., pp. 142-43, 265. 4. Hutchinson Mss. in Mass. Archives, CCXL. I35~i35a. J. Preface to Cotton M a t h e r , A Good Evening (1708), quoted in Holmes, Increase Mather Bibliography, 11. 591. 6. 1642 theses ethicae, nos. J, 6.

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HISTORY OF H A R V A R D UNIVERSITY

Modesty is the highest ornament of youth There is no true friendship among wicked men It is more difficult to resist desire than anger 1 A few show a technical knowledge of E t h i c s : Comity is the bond of civil Society The good-and-beautiful is the perfect Virtue What are called the cardinal virtues are the feelings, not the forms of virtue. 2 T h e following appear to be Hobbesean and anti-Hobbesean, respectively: Self-love is a fecund virtue Habits do not follow the temperament of the body

3

T h e mock ethical theses of 1663 take no new position, b u t express familiar ideas w i t h more w i t : Virtue begets the greatest vices The rich man casts his shadow both ways Ethics is the corrosive plaster of vices Virtue comes with a good constitution, and vice-versa 4 Honor is Will o' the Wisp, pursuing fugitives and fleeing pursuers 5 A considerable number reflect Calvinist theology, w i t h its paradoxical insistence on the moral responsibility of an individual, w h o nevertheless is incapable of doing good w i t h o u t divine grace: The Will is formaliter free No man's deliberate act is indifferent A virtuous action is not in the power of man No good man can be called wretched, nor bad man happy Drunkenness does not excuse a misdemeanor 6 1. 1646, 2. 3. 1663, 4. 5. 6.

1643 theses ethicae, nos. 5, 9; Aug. 10,1653, no. 9; 1642, no. 11; 1643, n o · I 2 ; no. 7. Aug. 10, 1653 theses ethicae, no. 8; 1647, no. 10 and no. 9. 1647, no. 13; 1643, no. 7. The contra to this last is taken in the mock theses of no. 9. Denied in 1643 theses ethicae, no. 7. Cf. 1643, no. 10. 1642, no. 4; 1643, n o · 6 ; l 6 4 6 > n o · 2 ; 1653 (Aug. 10), nos. 2, j .

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263

In 1670 appears in the ethical theses the same fantastic and poetical note that we have observed in the grammatical: A flatterer is by nature a polyp Avarice is a silver dropsy Justice is the earth's Atlas The way of virtue lies between Scylla and Charybdis After that year we find no more theses ethicae in such Commencement sheets as have been preserved. B u t this does not mean that Ames had defeated Keckermann: the study of Ethics continued as a separate discipline. Toward the latter part of the century, the textbook was Henry More's Enchiridion Ethicum, a much more wholesome work than his Enchiridion Metaphysicum. Although More's system was more Platonic than Aristotelian, he was one with Keckermann in regarding Ethics as a subject distinct from Theology, and asserting that the distinctions of good and evil are eternal and immutable, independent of mere will, whether human or divine. More's ethical treatise, published in 1667, was abstracted by William Brattle in 1687 (and also by John Leverett a few years later), in usum pupillorum. It was an excellent manual for young men, testing the virtues in the light of reason, yet persuasively arguing for the practice of virtue as the key to a happy life. Doubtless it was the popularity of the Enchiridion at Harvard which led Cotton Mather, an exponent of the inclusion of Ethics in Theology, to record in his diary a pious intention to bear public testimonies against' the Employing of so much Time upon Ethicks, in our Colledges. A vile Peece of Paganism.' 1 In addition to the study of Ethics as a branch of Philosophy, the Harvard students were taught practical Ethics, or morality, in that popular manual of Protestant casuistry, William Ames de Conscientia et eius casibus, Englished a s ' Cases of Conscience.' A s a practical exposition of what the Word of God did and did not permit, illustrated by concrete cases, this is one of the most valuable sources of puritan morality. It was probably included with Ames's Medulla in the ' D i v i n i t y Catecheticall' that was taught on Saturdays; 2 certainly there is no sign in the ethical theses that the students regarded Ames's practical do's and don't's as having any direct connection with Moral Philosophy. I.

7

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357.

2. See next Chapter.

XIII HISTORY, THEOLOGY, AND MEDICINE HISTORY AND GEOGRAPHY

History appears in President Dunster's programme as a subject read to freshmen on Saturday afternoons in winter. There is reason to believe that this, our first History course, was a forerunner of the famous Latin 10, 'The Private Life of the Romans,' given at Harvard from 1882 to 1925 by Professors James B. Greenough, Morris Hicky Morgan, and Clifford H. Moore. In Dr. Holdsworth's 'Directions for a Student in the Universitie' of Oxford, he advised freshmen to read 'Goodwin's Roman Antiquities,' in order to acquaint them 'with the manners and Customes of the Romans.' The book he meant was Thomas Godwyn's 'Romanae Historiae Anthologia, An English exposition of Romane Antiquities.' President Dunster as an undergraduate acquired a copy bound up with Godwyn's 'Moses and Aaron, Civil and Ecclesiastical Rites used by the Ancient Hebrews,' and brought the volume with him to America.1 In all probability he read lectures from it to the freshmen as a background for their classical and Hebraic studies. Henry Dunster was keenly interested in establishing a concordance between Ancient History and the Sacred Scripture. In the most profusely annotated book of his personal library that has come down to us, Hugh Broughton's 'Concent of Scripture' (London, 1620), the blank pages are covered with the President's chronological jottings, such as this on the date of Marathon: Thucidides primo refert διάβασιν Έίρζου contigisse 10 Annos post pugnam Marathoniam. Contigit διάβασα A. P. Jul. 4234 in eunte. ι . F.H. C., pp. 68, i n . Godwyn's two books are often bound up with Francis Rous, Archaeologiae Atticae libri septem. Seven Books of the Attick Antiquities. M y own copy (London, 1685) contains all three. President Oakes when a tutor owned an Oxford, 1623, edition of Godwyn, and sold it to William Brattle for 18d in 1675.

CURRICULUM: HISTORY viz. io et cum parte n post Pug. Mar. Ideoque Clad. Marath contigit in. 31. Dar. annum exeuntem 1 Of like character is Christopher Helwig's Theatrum Historicum et Chronologicum, a copy of which Dunster purchased for 8s Ыу near the close of his presidency. Robert Baillie's Operis Historici et Chronologici libri duo (Amsterdam, 1668), 'in which sacred and profane History is deduced out of the sources, from the Creation to Constantine,' was owned in college by President Wadsworth and his elder brother. Apparently Harvard graduates studying for their second degree used works of this sort to establish the chronology of the Scriptures. There is no mention of History, as such, in the College Laws of 1655, or in the programme of 1723; but from other evidence we know that History, especially Ancient History, was read as the humanists wished it to be read, as a recreation and a means of acquiring worldly wit and wisdom. Thomas Shepard (A.B. 1653), for instance, couples History with Poetry, paraphrasing Lord Bacon in advising his freshman son: Lett your studies be so ordered as to have variety . . . that when you are weary of one book, you may take pleasure . . . in another: and for this End read some Histories often, which (they Say) make men wise, as Poets make witty; both which are pleasant things in the midst of more difficult studies.3 A n d freshman Flynt had a similar hint from his uncle Leonard Hoar. 4 B u t very few histories have come down to us with marks of student ownership. Increase Mather's student copy of Sallust's 'Conspiracy of Catiline' and ' Jugurthan War,' with the Aldine scholia (Geneva, 1626), went from his possession into that of an undergraduate in 1668, and a copy of Stadius' text of Florus (Oxford, 1669) was in the hands of a Harvard student about twenty years later. Samuel Sewall acquired in grammar school ^Elian's 'Various History' in Greek with Latin translation, just the thing for a scholar's light reading. A considerable number of ancient histories, and a few modern ones by 1. Copy in H . C . L . , p. 110. Dunster's marginal notes contain many references to other works of the sort, such as the de Annt Christi (Leyden, 1649) of Villum Lange, professor of Mathematics at Copenhagen, and the writings of Franciscus Gomarus. 2. Fifth edition, Oxford, 1651 (H. C. L.). The date shows that Dunster continued to add to his library in America. 3. C. S. M.y x i v . 194. Cf. Bacon's essay of Studies. 4. Appendix C , below.

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HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Camden, Polydore Vergil, and Knolles, were in the College Library. Sir Thomas Temple, Baronet and Governor of Acadia (Nova Scotia), 1 presented the College with 'two Globes a Cselestiall and Terrestriair about the year 1665; 2 and ten years later Cotton Mather as a sophomore (1675-76) 'went over the use of the Globes'1 Geography is mentioned as one of the regular subjects at Harvard, in a contemporary 'Brief Relation of the Plantation of New England to the Year 1689'; 4 and Ά System of Geography' is in the programme of 1723. The only geographical work that I have found with marks of student ownership is a large and handsome English ' Cosmographie' by Peter Heylyn, printed in 1657 and owned by several members of the Eliot family, by President Wadsworth, and by Nathaniel Williams (A.B. 1693). Heylyn provided an excellent map of America for that period, but his information about the New World was scanty. A t the end of Marcus Friedrich Wendelin's Contemplationes Physicae, which was fairly well distributed among Harvard students in the late seventeenth century, they could read in a curious supplement called Admiranda Nili Commentatione ex c c c x v i n Autoribus Graecis & Latinis illustrata, a detailed description of the Land of Egypt, together with a brief chapter on the Habits of the Hippopotamus, and the Etymology, Somatology, Physiology, Arithmology, Philology, Echthrology, and Hieroglyphic Tropology of the Crocodile. B y the end of the century, the College Library had a number of descriptions of the world by Peter Heylyn and others, together with Hakluyt's Voyages, Purchas his Pilgrimes, and atlases by the famous Dutch cartographers Hondius, Mercator, and Ortelius. 1. Son of Sir John Temple of Stanton Bury, Bucks, and nephew or grandnephew of the Lord Saye and Sele to whom President Chauncy dedicated his work on Justification. A man of the world, of royalist sympathies and aristocratic background, he became a good Bostonian and a member of Increase Mather's church. Later, he gave the largest individual subscription toward the building of Old Harvard Hall. See A . H . Buffinton, 'Sir Thomas Temple in Boston,'C. S. M., XXVII. 308-19. 2. C. S. Μ., XV. 200. The first library regulations, of 1666, forbid the 'lending or removing out of the Library the new Globes.' Id. 194. 3. Paterna Ms. (Chicago Hist. Soc.), p. 5; cf. Barrett Wendell, Cotton Mather (1891), p. 36. Mather was probably referring to one of the works of Joseph Moxon the royal hydrographer, which his father was reading in 1676; but by 'use of the Globes' he may merely have m e a n t ' studying Geography.' 4. 3 Coll. Μ. H. S., 1. 101.

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ι . Cf. Zanchi, op. eit. (1602 ed.), 'ParsPrima,' lib. i. cap. iii. de Mundo, q., ii. p. 29: ' N o n est igitur una et simplex quaestio de aeternitate Mundi, sed duplex: Una, an sit aeternus; altera, an potuerit esse aeternus.' 2. Cf. Zanchi's second argument, id. 30. 3. Cf. Zanchi's eighth argument, id. 31.

CURRICULUM: THEOLOGY

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created, and preserved, in the same moment. Nam creatio ponit non presupponit objectum sed conservatio preesupponit поп ponit subjecturn.1 4. Α natura ALternitatis. For Eternity admits no parenthesis of time, Mternitas est interminabilis existentia possessio. So that to make the World Eternal is to assert it cosubstantial with ens primum, to call the creature Creator, to confound the Truth in contradictions and to give the effect one of the incommunicable properties of its Cause.2 Beginning in 1668, we find Harvard inceptors taking a firm stand against Molinism, the scientia media Dei of the Jesuits; 3 and from 1674 there are a few quaestiones which show that certain students had read but not relished the growing number of works which were attempting to reconcile Science and Theology. 4 The Harvard community drifted into this Natural Theology, 5 as a century later they swam into Unitarianism, without realizing whither they were bound. Increase Mather and Charles Morton were already approaching the Natural Theology position in their books on Comets and Physics; and nearly three years after Morton's Compendium Physicae was introduced, Henry Newman (A.B. 1687) in Harvard's Ephemeris, or Almanack for 1690 printed with impunity an essay on the earth's motion that was almost pure Natural Theology. Roman Catholicism as such is not attacked in the quaestiones until 1695; there is significance in that date, in the midst of New England's decennium luctuosum, the decade of warfare and frontier raids by French and Indians. T h e Pope is the Antichrist of Scripture; Jesuits cannot be good subjects; and the Catholic Church of today is not the true Church of Christ. 6 I. С f. Zanchi's seventh argument, id. 30-31. Externally, there seems to be no resemblance, since Zanchi argues from the future destructibility of the world. But Whiting has merely substituted for a part of Zanchi the following from Burgersdicius, Institutions Metaphysicae (1657 ed., p. 302), 11. x . 9: 'Deinde, si quid ab aeterno crearetur, non distingueretur creatio ä conservatione, possetque idem dici simul creari et conservari. Hoc autem absurdum est, et contradictionem implicat: nam quod conservatur, est; quod creatur, non est, sed fit; imb quod j a m est, creari aut omnino fieri nequit.' 1. Zanchi, op. cit., p. 30. 3. 1668, no. 2; 1679, no. I; 1692, no. 2; 1699, no. 6; 1704, no. 9. Other anti-Jesuit quaestiones are 1697, no. 1; 1704, no. 12. Several volumes by Molina are in the H. C. L . Catalogue of 1723. 4. 1674, no. 4; 1695, no. 3; 1701, no. I; 1704, no. 7; but in 1705 John Fiske asserts that there is a Natural Theology. 5. The H . C . L . Catalogue of 1723 contains the Theologia Naturalis of Theophile Raynard, S.J. (Lyons, 1622); the Natural Theology of Matthew Barker (1674); and John R a y , The Wisdom oj God in Creation (1709). 6. 1695, n o · 4! l^97> n o · '» ^ 9 8 , no. 5.

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HISTORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Increase Mather plumed himself for having, in 1692, caused the Masters of Arts to begin disputations on theological quaestiones, with a design to dispute down Arminianism, that subversive and dangerous promise of divine grace to all good men who sought it of their Lord. 1 Alas, poor Mather! In another seventy-five years, your School of the Prophets will be pretty much all 'Arminian'; it is the sons of Harvard who will free New England from those theological terrors to which you would subject her for all time. There were limits, however, to Mather's intolerance; and it was also during his presidency that Harvard inceptors began to defend only the negative of such quaestiones as: Whether one may answer heretics by the sword ? Whether Religion may be propagated by force and by arms ? 2 Late in the century the non-theological quaestiones became more numerous at Masters' Commencements, indicating a declining ratio of candidates for the ministry; and at the same time, the proportion of sectarian questions among the theological ones also increased. These topics are slender reeds on which to build conclusions; but they may at least indicate the direction of the wind. The New England churches were becoming less sure of themselves, more on the defensive against 'heresies' fast gathering recruits, and the decline of religious enthusiasm. In Dunster's and Chauncy's day it was necessary above all that a minister be learned; and after he had spent four years on the Arts and Philosophies, three years more were little enough to read what the Fathers and Doctors of the Church had to say about the relations of God and man. B y 1700 it seemed less important to know what Augustine and Origen and Aquinas had written than to be ready with a line of argument to defend positions officially assumed by the New England churches against heretics and indifferents. 1 . Mather's Autobiography (Ms., A. A. S.), under 1692. He probably meant informal disputations by resident Bachelors. No quaestio against Arminianism as such appears before 1694 (no. 4). In 1698 (no. 8) it is denied that Christ died for all and sundry; and 1699, no. 4, is anti-Arminian. 2. Last in 1698 and 1699 quaestiones.

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