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additional pillars to underprop the building, began to think of a place of more safety in the eyes of man than the two frontier towns of Charles Towne and Boston were, for the habitation of such as the Lord had prepared to govern this pilgrim people.
Wherefore they rather made choice to enter further among the Indians than hazard the fury of malignant adversaries who in a rage might pursue them, and therefore chose a place situate on Charles River, between Charles Towne and Water Towne, where they erected a town called New Town, now named Cambridge, being in form like a list cut off from the broad-cloth of the two forenamed towns, where this wandering race of Jacobites gathered the eighth church of Christ.”
1
Notwithstanding it was agreed that “all the assistants” should build at the New Town in the spring of 1631, it does not appear that any of them fulfilled the agreement, except Dudley and Bradstreet.
Governor Winthrop indeed erected a house;2 but he subsequently took it down again and removed it to Boston.
This led to a sharp controversy between Dudley and Winthrop, which was at length decided by the elders in favor of Dudley.3 There may have been good and sufficient reasons why Winthrop should prefer to remain in Boston rather than to remove to the New Town.
But it is much to be regretted that he should claim to have substantially fulfilled his obligation, or “performed the words of the promise,” by erecting a house, though he immediately removed it. This is scarcely consistent with his otherwise fair fame as a gentleman of singular ingenuousness.
It would seem that Sir Richard Saltonstall intended to build a house, and
1 Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc., XIII. 136.
2 It has been said that Winthrop erected only the frame of a house; but he says it was a house inhabited by servants. See next note.
3 Savage's Winthrop, i. 82, 83. Winthrop says Dudley “complained of the breach of promise, both in the governor and others, in not building at Newtown. The governor answered, that he had performed the words of the promise; for he had a house up, and seven or eight servants abiding in it, by the day appointed; and for the removing his house, he alleged that, seeing that the rest of the assistants went not about to build, and that his neighbors of Boston had been discouraged from removing thither by Mr. Deputy himself, and thereupon had (under all their hands) petitioned him, that (according to the promise he made to them when they first sat down with him at Boston, namely, that he would not remove, except they went with him), he would not leave them:—this was the occasion that he removed his house. Upon these and other speeches to this purpose, the ministers went apart for one hour; then returning, they delivered their opinions, that the governor was in fault for removing of his house so suddenly, without conferring with the deputy and the rest of the assistants; but if the deputy were the occasion of discouraging Boston men from removing, it would excuse the governor a tanto, but not a toto. The governor, professing himself willing to submit his own opinion to the judgment of so many wise and godly friends, acknowledged himself faulty.”
Boston. Houghton and Mifflin. 1877.
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