Dinsmore Documentation presents Classics of American Colonial History
| Author: | Wright, Thomas Goddard. |
| Title: | Literary Culture in Early New England, 1620-1730. |
| Citation: | New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press; London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1920. |
| Subdivision: | Chapter IV |
| HTML by Dinsmore Documentation * Added December 17, 2004 | |
| ◄ Chapter III Directory of Files Chapter V ► |
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THE early settlers of New England were not only well educated and furnished with libraries, but in many cases came from families of distinction and even of title, and brought with them considerable wealth. Among those who came with John Winthrop in 1630 were Isaac Johnson and his wife, the Lady Arbella, sister to the Earl of Lincoln. These two did not live long enough to influence the life of the colony, but that they desired to come is significant. Three years later the Lady Arbella’s sister, Lady Susan, and her husband, John Humfrey, joined the colonists.1 Lady Alice Apsley Boteler, widow of Lord John Boteler and daughter of Sir Edward Apsley of Sussex, married Mr. George Fenwick just before he embarked for America, and accompanied him to Connecticut.2 Sir Richard Saltonstall also boasted a title, and was the son of a Lord Mayor of London.3 John Winthrop had been a magistrate and man of affairs in England, and his father, Adam Winthrop, was also a magistrate and, for a number of years, auditor of Trinity College, Cambridge.4 Edward Johnson, town clerk of Woburn and author of “The Wonder-Working Providence,” was the son of the parish clerk of St. George’s, Canterbury, and possessed a considerable estate in Canterbury and elsewhere in Kent.5 Thomas Dudley had been steward for the Earl of Lincoln and managed the large estate successfully.6 Simon Bradstreet, Dudley’s son-in-law, had succeeded him in the management of the
1 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 127.
2 Steiner, History of Guilford and Madison, p. 22.
3 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 25 note.
4 Diary of Adam Winthrop, in the Life and Letters of John Winthrop, i. 405 ff.
5 Jameson, Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence, p. 5.
6 Magnalia, i. 133.
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affairs of the Earl of Lincoln, and later had been steward for the Countess of Warwick.7 Governor William Leet of Connecticut was by education a lawyer, and by employment a register in the Bishop’s court.8 John Wilson was a grandnephew of Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury.9 Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was second cousin to the poet Dryden.10 President Chauncy’s wife was granddaughter of Bishop Still.11 President Hoar married a daughter of Lord Lisle, one of the Judges of Charles I.12 Theophilus Eaton had been employed by the King of England as envoy to the King of Denmark, and had been successful in business as a member of the East Land Company.13 The list might be extended to considerable length, but one quotation will perhaps be sufficient to show the type of people who helped to settle New England. Speaking of one town, and that not one of the largest, Scituate, Deane writes:
Many of the fathers were men of good education and easy fortune, who had left homes altogether enviable, save in the single circumstance of the abridgment of their religious liberty. In 1639, this town contained more men of distinguished talents and fair fortune than it has at any period since. They were “the men of Kent,” celebrated in English history as men of gallantry, loyalty and courtly manners. Gilson, Vassall, Hatherly, Cudworth, Tilden, Hoar, Foster, Stedman, Saffin, Hinckley, and others had been accustomed to the elegancies of life of England.14
There are numerous evidences of wealth among the pioneers. John Winthrop had sufficient property so that the mismanagement and defalcation of his steward to the amount of over £2000 did not ruin him, although it was a
7 Ellis edition, The Works of Anne Bradstreet, p. xxii.
8 Magnalia, i. 156.
9 Winthrop’s Journal, i. 51 note 3.
10 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xx. 366.
11 Ibid., x. 253.
12 Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 1st Series, vi. 100 note.
13 Magnalia, i. 154; Winthrop’s Journal, i. 223 note.
14 Quoted by Chaplin, Life of Henry Dunster, p. 205.
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great loss.15 John Harvard left an estate of £1600, besides his books.16 Thomas Flint brought with him an estate of £2000.17 Peter Bulkeley brought £6000.18 William Tyng, dying in 1653, left a property inventoried at £2774.14.04.19 The estate of Henry Webb, inventoried September 25, 1660, amounted to £7819.20 Edward Breck “died in the year 1662, leaving an estate, the value of which ran into hundreds of pounds sterling, a large sum for his day.”21 The
15 Life and Letters, ii. 253; also Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 4th Series, vii. 224 ff. In considering the question of wealth in the colonies, the difference in the value or purchasing power of money must be kept in mind. The highest salary paid to any minister around Boston in 1657, according to a report made by a special committee to the General Court, was £100, and the average of the twelve listed in the report was £65, only three out of the twelve receiving over £60. The families to be supported on these salaries averaged seven in number. Some had farms in addition to the salary, but they could hope for no other income, as marriages they considered a civil function, to be performed only by the magistrates. The cost of labor also illustrates the high value of money at that time. A report to the General Court of Connecticut in 1680, signed by William Leet, Governor, and John Allen, Secretary of the Colony, complains that “labour is dear, being from 2s to 2s6 a day for a labourer.” (Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 1st Series, iv. 222.) Evidently labor had been cheaper in the early days of the colony; but accepting this figure, and comparing it with present (1916 pre-war) prices of from $1.50 to $2.50 for unskilled labor, we get a ratio of about four to one. An estate of £1000 then would thus be equivalent to one of $20,000 today, and John Eliot’s £60 salary as pastor of the church at Roxbury would amount to $1200. As the Connecticut report also quotes pork at 3d a pound, beef at 2¼d, and butter at 6d, the ratio of four to one does not seem too high. F. B. Dexter (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, xviii. 137) calls £300 equivalent to perhaps six or seven thousand dollars with us.
16 Thomas Shepard’s Autobiography, p. 63.
17 Peter Bulkeley wrote (to whom is not known, as the name is missing from the letter), “I . . . . do further entreat you would please, both of you, to take into consideration the condition of Mrs. Flint, the widow of worthy Mr. Flint deceased, who served in the same office of magistrate many years, and never received of the country any recompense. . . . . And some things there are which may persuade on this side more effectually, both in regard of a great family of children, and the great decay of his estate which he brought into this country, (being about £2000,). . . . (Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 3rd Series, 47.)
18 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxi. 155.
19 Ibid., xxx. 432.
20 Ibid., x. 180.
21 Dr. Edward Breck in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xiv. 49 ff. He adds, “It is significant of the degree of refinement obtaining among [footnote continues on p. 79] even the earliest pioneers of New England [Breck came in 1635], that in the inventory of Edward Breck’s estate occurs the mention of a bath-tub.” “New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xi. 344.
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Reverend John Norton’s estate was appraised, April 24, 1663, at £2095.22 The Reverend John Wilson left £419 in addition to a farm valued at £1300.23 John Endicott’s estate, 1665, totalled £2269.24 John Bracket was worth £1021, according to inventory of February 22, 1666;25 and the same year Henry Shrimpton, brasier, left assets of £11,979, and debts to the amount of £5743.26 The estate of Hezekiah Usher, who died in 1676, was appraised at £15,358.27 These are just some of the larger estates, and the Suffolk and Essex Probate Records contain many inventories of estates appraised between £500 and £1000.
There is further interesting testimony in regard to the existence of men of wealth in New England in the sarcastic reference to them made by John Josselyn, an English merchant, in his account of his two voyages to New England:
The grose Goddons, or great masters, as also some of their Merchants are damnable rich; generally all of their judgement, inexplicably covetous and proud.28
Elsewhere he wrote of Boston as it was in 1663:
The buildings are handsome, joyning one to the other as in London; with many large streets, most of them paved with pebble stone. In the high street towards the Common, there are fair buildings, some of stone; and, at the east end of the town, one amongst the rest, built by the shore by Mr. Gibs, a merchant,
23 Ibid., xvii. 344.
24 Ibid., xv. 128. This inventory, as perhaps some of the others, includes farm lands; but as one farm of 550 acres is appraised at just £550, I do not think the inventories are “padded” with undeveloped land.
25 Ibid., xv. 250.
26 Ibid., xv. 78. The expenditure for his funeral amounted to £134.05.06 ($2500.00 in modern equivalent). It must have been an elaborate ceremonial to have cost that much!
27 Littlefield, Early Boston Booksellers, p. 68.
28 Josselyn, Two Voyages to New England, p. 180.
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being a stately edifice, which it is thought will stand him in little less than £3,000 before it be fully finished.29
In the matter of wealth, as in other things already noted, Plymouth was far behind the rest of New England. Estates above £500 were rare, and £200-£300 was the usual figure, as will be seen by reference to pages 28 and 29, above.
The settlers of New England, then, were not without some wealth, just as they were not without either libraries or means of education. And they possessed one other element of culture at a surprisingly early period in their history: a printing-press was brought over and set up at Cambridge in 1638, before Boston was ten years old.30 This may not seem at all remarkable until we compare Cambridge with other cities both in England and in other colonies. Printing was begun in Glasgow one year later than in Cambridge. It was first practiced in Rochester in 1648, or ten years later, and at Exeter in 1668, thirty years later. There was no printing in Manchester until 1732, and none in Liverpool until after 1750.31 The first press in Pennsylvania32 was William Bradford’s, established about 1686. Bradford moved to New York in 1693 to establish the first press there.33 A press was running in Virginia in 1682, but was quickly suppressed, there being no further printing in that colony until 1729.34 There was no press in Canada until 1751, when Bartholomew Green, Jr., brought one from Boston to Halifax.35 Another was established
29 Josselyn, New England’s Rarities Discovered, p. 1. $60,000 (in modern equivalent) for a house!
30 Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections, 4th Series, vi. 99.
31 Truebner, Bibliographical Guide to American Literature, p. ix.
32 Thomas, History of Printing, i. 208. The Quakers, like the Puritans, showed their interest in books by the early establishment of a press, within five years of the granting of the charter.
33 Ibid., i. 291.
34 Ibid., i. 331. In 1671 Governor Berkeley remarked, “I thank God we have not free schools nor printing.” (Ibid., i. 330.)
35 Ibid., i. 357.
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in Quebec in 1764, and one in Montreal in 1775.36 One press did not satisfy New England long, for a second press was established in 1674, in Boston, followed by several others before 1700, and one was set up at New London in 1709.37 Some of the productions of the New England presses will be discussed in the following and later chapters.
36 Ibid., i. 362; Truebner, Bibliographical Guide, p. viii.
37 Thomas, History of Printing, i. 184.
Dinsmore Documentation presents Classics of American Colonial History