Historic leaves, volume 3, April, 1904 - January, 1905

[27] ‘Forasmuch as it is evident that the excessive strength of beer and ale in Inns & Alehouses is a principal occasion of the waste of the grain of this kingdom and the only fuel of drunkenness & disorder,’ etc., and enacts that a strength of not over two bushels of malt in a hogshead of beer shall be hereafter used under a penalty of ten pounds for each offense, etc.

The commencement of the Massachusetts Bay Company, whose charter of 1628 Winthrop brought with him, is thus told by Deputy-Governor Thomas Dudley, in a letter to the Countess of Lincoln. He says: ‘Touching the Plantation which we here have begun, it fell out thus: About the year 1627, some friends being together in Lincolnshire, fell into discourse about New England and the planting of the Gospel there, and after some deliberation, we imparted our reasons, by letters and messages, to some in London and the west country, where it was likewise deliberately thought upon, and at length negotiation so ripened that in the year 1628 we procured a patent from his Majesty for our planting between the Mattachusetts Bay and Charles river on the south, and the river Merrimack on the north.’ . . .

‘Mr. Winthrop, of Suffolk (who was well known in his own country and well approved here for his piety, liberality, wisdom and gravity) coming in to us, we came to such resolution, that in April, 1630, we set sail from Old England.’ The company to whom this patent from King James of which Dudley speaks was granted was entitled ‘The Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England.’ Its records have been preserved and published, and are very full in detail, and intensely interesting with reference to the founding of Eastern Massachusetts, and the part taken therein by John Winthrop. The company held its ‘General Courts’ from time to time in London; the one in which we are most interested is concerning the transfer of its government to Massachusetts and appointment of Winthrop as governor. It was on July 28, 1629, and reads: ‘And lastly, Mr. Governor (Cradock) read certain propositions conceived by himself, viz.: That for the advancement of the Plantation, the inducing and encouraging persons of worth and quality to transplant themselves and families thither, and for other weighty reasons, to ’