The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees | Page 6

the new country. And he helped to form in Newport a philosophical reunion, the effects of which were long felt.
In the autumn of 1731 he sailed from Boston for London, where he arrived in January of the next year. There a bishopric and twenty years of useful and honourable labour awaited him. He died at Oxford, whence he had removed from his see at Cloyne, on Sunday evening, January 14, 1753, while reading aloud to his family the burial service portion of Corinthians. He was buried in the Cathedral of Christ Church.
Of the traces he left at Newport, there still remain, beside the house, a chair in which he was wont to write, a few books and papers, the organ presented by him to Trinity Church, the big family portrait, by Smibert--and the little grave in Trinity churchyard, where, on the south side of the Kay monument, sleeps "Lucia Berkeley, obiit., the fifth of September, 1731." Moreover the memory of the man's beautiful, unselfish life pervades this section of Rhode Island, and the story of his sweetness and patience under a keen and unexpected disappointment furnishes one of the most satisfying pages in our early history.
The life of Berkeley is indeed greater than anything that he did, and one wonders not as one explores the young preacher's noble and endearing character that the distraught Vanessa fastened upon him, though she knew him only by reputation, as one who would make it his sacred duty to do all in his power to set her memory right in a censorious world.

THE MAID OF MARBLEHEAD
Of all the romantic narratives which enliven the pages of early colonial history, none appeals more directly to the interest and imagination of the lover of what is picturesque than the story of Agnes Surriage, the Maid of Marblehead. The tale is so improbable, according to every-day standards, so in form with the truest sentiment, and so calculated to satisfy every exaction of literary art, that even the most credulous might be forgiven for ascribing it to the fancy of the romancer rather than to the research of the historian.
Yet when one remembers that the scene of the first act of Agnes Surriage's life drama is laid in quaint old Marblehead, the tale itself instantly gains in credibility. For nothing would be too romantic to fit Marblehead. This town is fantastic in the extreme, builded, to quote Miss Alice Brown, who has written delightfully of Agnes and her life, "as if by a generation of autocratic landowners, each with a wilful bee in his bonnet."[1] For Marblehead is no misnomer, and the early settlers had to plant their houses and make their streets as best they could. As a matter of stern fact, every house in Marblehead had to be like the wise man's in the Bible: "built upon a rock." The dwellings themselves were founded upon solid ledges, while the principal streets followed the natural valleys between. The smaller dividing paths led each and every one of them to the impressive old Town House, and to that other comfortable centre of social interests, the Fountain Inn, with its near-by pump. This pump, by the bye, has a very real connection with the story of Agnes Surriage, for it was here, according to one legend, that Charles Henry Frankland first saw the maid who is the heroine of our story.
[Illustration: AGNES SURRIAGE PUMP, MARBLEHEAD, MASS.]
The gallant Sir Harry was at this time (1742) collector of the port of Boston, a place to which he had been appointed shortly before, by virtue of his family's great influence at the court of George the Second. No more distinguished house than that of Frankland was indeed to be found in all England at this time. A lineal descendant of Oliver Cromwell, our hero was born in Bengal, May 10, 1716, during his father's residence abroad as governor of the East India Company's factory. The personal attractiveness of Frankland's whole family was marked. It is even said that a lady of this house was sought in marriage by Charles the Second, in spite of the fact that a Capulet-Montague feud must ever have existed between the line of Cromwell and that of Charles Stuart.
Young Harry, too, was clever as well as handsome. The eldest of his father's seven sons, he was educated as befitted the heir to the title and to the family estate at Thirkleby and Mattersea. He knew the French and Latin languages well, and, what is more to the point, used his mother tongue with grace and elegance. Botany and landscape-gardening were his chief amusements, while with the great literature of the day he was as familiar as with the great men who made it.
As early as 1738, when he was twenty-two, he had come into possession of an ample