History of American Literature | Page 9

in his wisdom saw another course fitter for
them."
America need not be ashamed of either the form or the subject matter
of her early colonial prose in comparison with that produced in
England at the same time.
JOHN WINTHROP, 1588-1649
[Illustration: JOHN WINTHROP]
On March 29, 1630, John Winthrop made the first entry in his Journal
on board the ship Arbella, before she left the Isle of Wight for
Massachusetts Bay. This Journal was to continue until a few months
before his death in 1649, and was in after times to receive the dignified
name of History of New England, although it might more properly still
be called his Journal, as its latest editor does indeed style it.
John Winthrop was born in the County of Suffolk, England, in 1588,
the year of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. He was a wealthy,
well-educated Puritan, the owner of broad estates. As he paced the deck
of the Arbella, the night before he sailed for Massachusetts, he knew
that he was leaving comfort, home, friends, position, all for liberty of
conscience. Few men have ever voluntarily abandoned more than
Winthrop, or clung more tenaciously to their ideals.

After a voyage lasting more than two months, he settled with a large
number of Puritans on the site of modern Boston. For the principal part
of the time from his arrival in 1630 until his death in 1649, he served as
governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Not many civil leaders of
any age have shown more sagacity, patriotism, and tireless devotion to
duty than John Winthrop.
His Journal is a record of contemporaneous events from 1630 to 1648.
The early part of this work might with some justice have been called
the Log of the Arbella.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF BEGINNING OF MS. OF
WINTHROP'S "JOURNAL"]
TRANSLITERATION OF FACSIMILE OF WINTHROP'S
"JOURNAL"
"ANNO DOMINI 1630, MARCH 29, MONDAY. "EASTER
MONDAY.
"Riding at the Cowes, near the Isle of Wight, in the Arbella, a ship of
350 tons, whereof Capt. Peter Milborne was master, being manned with
52 seamen, and 28 pieces of ordnance, (the wind coming to the N. by
W. the evening before,) in the morning there came aboard us Mr.
Cradock, the late governor, and the masters of his 2 ships, Capt. John
Lowe, master of the Ambrose, and Mr. Nicholas Hurlston, master of the
Jewel, and Mr. Thomas Beecher, master of the Talbot."
The entry for Monday, April 12, 1630, is:--
"The wind more large to the N. a stiff gale, with fair weather. In the
afternoon less wind, and our people began to grow well again. Our
children and others, that were sick and lay groaning in the cabins, we
fetched out, and having stretched a rope from the steerage to the
main-mast, we made them stand, some of one side and some of the
other, and sway it up and down till they were warm, and by this means
they soon grew well and merry."

The following entry for June 5, 1644, reflects an interesting side light
on the government of Harvard, our first American college:--
"Two of our ministers' sons, being students in the college, robbed two
dwelling houses in the night of some fifteen pounds. Being found out,
they were ordered by the governors of the college to be there whipped,
which was performed by the president himself--yet they were about
twenty years of age; and after they were brought into the court and
ordered to twofold satisfaction, or to serve so long for it. We had yet no
particular punishment for burglary."
Another entry for 1644 tells of one William Franklin, condemned for
causing the death of his apprentice:--
"The case was this. He had taken to apprentice one Nathaniel Sewell,
one of those children sent over the last year for the country; the boy had
the scurvy and was withal very noisome, and otherwise ill disposed.
His master used him with continual rigour and unmerciful correction,
and exposed him many times to much cold and wet in the winter season,
and used divers acts of rigour towards him, as hanging him in the
chimney, etc., and the boy being very poor and weak, he tied him upon
an horse and so brought him (sometimes sitting and sometimes hanging
down) to Boston, being five miles off, to the magistrates, and by the
way the boy calling much for water, would give him none, though he
came close by it, so as the boy was near dead when he came to Boston,
and died within a few hours after."
Winthrop relates how Franklin appealed the case when he was found
guilty, and how the Puritans inflicted the death penalty on him after
searching the Bible for a rule on which to base their decision. The most
noticeable