The life and work of Thomas Dudley, the second governor of Massachusetts

Front matter

Glass.

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Preface

This Life of Governor Thomas Dudley has been written, especially so far as it pertains to Massachusetts, upon the authority of the public records, while the earlier portion, describing his career in England, has been produced chiefly from the literature which appeared immediately after his time.

We have not overlooked those writers who, during more than two centuries, have recorded with great unanimity their opinions respecting the bigotry of Dudley.

We indulge the hope that the thoughtful reader will conclude with us that an injustice has been done to the memory of an excellent man, who cordially welcomed truth from every source.

Dean Stanley has truly said, " Every one is familiar with the reversal of popular judgments respecting individuals or events of our own time. It would be an easy, though perhaps an invidious task, to point out the changes from obloquy to applause." J

Our explanation of the adverse opinions and offensive epithets applied to Dudley is well expressed by the poet Prior. 2

Dudley was as liberal in religion and politics as the public

1 Hist. Mem. Canterbury, by A. P. Stanley, 59.

2 " Till their own dreams at length deceive 'em,

And oft repeating they believe 'em."

(Alma, iii. Canto 30.)

vi PREFACE

sentiment of his age allowed, and nothing beyond this can be required. He was not then regarded as intolerant, and the judgment of his neighbors and peers is the only reasonable one.

The difficulties of our undertaking are set forth so fully in the first chapter that it is not essential to enlarge upon them here. The Puritanic quality of our theme has led us into some digression, in search for the social life in the midst of which Puritanism flourished.

It is said that Cromwell possessed a " massive stature ; big, massive head, of somewhat leonine aspect ; wart above the right eyebrow ; nose of considerable blunt-aquiline proportions," * and that when a limner attempted to improve on nature in painting his portrait, he impatiently exclaimed, " Paint me as I am."

Thomas Dudley had the same unaffected, rugged character. He would say to us if he could, " I lived and acted regardless of praise or blame. I appeal from the unfair and incomplete judgments of biased men, to that unerring judge who knew my motives, inspired and led me in life. I ask neither apologies nor explanations respecting my life work. But if I am to be painted, ' paint me as I am,' for I say with Othello, ' Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.' "

The aim of the author has not been chiefly vindication, but to present the notable career of an eminent founder of New England, a public servant whose honest, healthful methods in public life are at present worthy of imitation. We must return with all possible speed to the same faithful, intelligent administration of the affairs of state which distinguished Dudley, to protect ourselves from great evils and

1 Carlyle's Speeches and Letters of Cromwell, ii. 287.

PREFACE vii

political corruptions, which at present menace our institutions.

Mr. Moses Coit Tyler says : " Doubtless we shall be ready to say with Nathaniel Hawthorne : ' Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors ; and let each successive generation thank him not less fervently for being one step removed further from them in the march of ages.' "

Human progress in recent centuries has been sufficient to awaken the gratitude of thoughtful men for having been born into modern society with its light and culture.

A few hundred years later our descendants will be commiserating us on the intolerable evils of society in our day. They will also bring us into comparison with themselves, pluming themselves over our records, deriding our inhumanity to man, our cruelty to animals, and entertaining themselves with our antique foolishness. We shall be fortunate if our service to the world, with a perspective of as many years, is as creditable under examination as that of the Puritan founders of New England.

We heartily approve of the first clause of the quotation, " Let us thank God for such ancestors." We neither adopt all of their theology nor all of their practices. We have a similar hesitancy respecting some of the teachings of Moses, the great lawgiver of antiquity. Both the Puritans and that eminent Hebrew were lights in the world in the greatest of all concernments, and are to be judged in the wisdom and intelligence of their respective periods and environments. The fundamental truth of all pure religions, indeed of the universal religion itself, which was proclaimed to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, was the groundwork, enduring and life-giving, of both manifestations of truth. 1

1 The family of Thomas Dudley was undoubtedly more important in viii PREFACE

We tender our grateful acknowledgments to the Governor Thomas Dudley Association of Boston, Mass., for their important assistance in this undertaking.

We are greatly indebted to the valuable " History of the Dudley Family," by Dean Dudley, Esq., and also to the invaluable services of Caroline Rathbone Jones, whose earnest labors have entered into this work with unfaltering energy.

the affairs of Massachusetts during her first hundred years, or until a quarter of a century previous to the Declaration of Independence, than any other family of the original undertakers, assistants, or governors. A democratic revolution at the close of that period was under perpetual agitation advancing towards a crisis of separation from the mother country. The Dudleys, who had been so long and powerfully under royal prerogative, were then sent into retirement. (Appendix B, C, D, E, F ; Eliot's Diet., Colonel William Dudley.)

Contents

PAGE

CHAPTER

I. The childhood and family of Thomas Dudley, 1576-

Appendix

A. Thomas Dudley's Letter to the Countess of Lincoln . . 437

B. Governor Joseph Dudley 453

C. Governor Simon Bradstreet and his wife, Anne . . . 464

D. Major-General Dennison and his wife, Patience . . . 465

E. Rev. Samuel Dudley 467

F. Rev. John Woodbridge and his wife, Mercy .... 468

G. Captain Jonathan Wade and his wife, Deborah . . . 469

H. Sarah Pacey 469

I. Paul Dudley 47 2

ILLUSTRATIONS

Facing Page

Dudley Castle in the County of Worcester, England. Frontispiece

Compton-Winyates, Warwickshire 12

Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire 16

Westminster Hall, London 24

Court of Common Pleas, Westminster Hall, London ... 28

Doorway to St. Andrew's Church, on the south side ... 36

St. Andrew's Church, at Sempringham, Lincolnshire ... 40

Interior of St. Andrew's Church 46

Church of St. Botolph, Boston, England 50

Interior of Church of St. Botolph • S 2

Willows on the line of Dudley's Palisade in Cambridge, Mass. . 126

" Two Brothers," on the Bank of the Concord River, Bedford,

Mass 252

Charter of Harvard College of 1650, bearing the Sign Manual

of Governor Dudley 394

THE LIFE AND WORK OF THOMAS DUDLEY

Chapter I

It may be reasonably questioned whether any single character in American history was more devoted to right doing, or has been more thoroughly made to appear to be what he was not, or more completely undervalued and neglected by his friends and traduced by the indifferent, since his own generation, which highly appreciated and honored him, than the second governor of Massachusetts, whose life work we propose to sketch.

Thomas Dudley, a Puritan second only to Governor John Winthrop in founding the Colony of Massachusetts, and in its history from 1630 until 1653, was born at Northampton, England, in the year 1576, it is said near the residence of the Earl of Northampton. 1 But since there was no Earl of Northampton until August 2, 16 18, 2 it must be intended that he was born near Castle Ashby, 3 the home of Henry Compton, or Baron Compton, whose son William became the first Earl of Northampton in 161 8, as above mentioned. We shall have a special interest in this first Earl, because Governor Dudley was for many years in the highly honorable position of page to him.

It is the duty of every public man to write his autobiography, and give to mankind his own interpretation of events. Without this, the only person who knew the reasons for his

1 J. B. Moore's Memoirs of Am. Governors, 273.

2 Burke's Peerage, 1036.

8 S. C. Hall's Baronial Halls of England, i.

2 THOMAS DUDLEY [ch. i

action in a given case cannot be heard, while enemies and rivals are left unanswered to color the story of his life work, as their memory, tinged possibly with personal prejudice, may dictate. Without such autobiography, persons seeking in the most impartial and judicial spirit to do justice to him are forced to conjecture and theorize as to his motives, and, with otherwise needless labor, to reproduce the different parts of his story, to render the whole as consistent as possible without the connecting links, which he held as a secret never imparted to the world. 1

Governor John Winthrop did not make this mistake, but, with that prudent regard for the good opinion of posterity which signalized his thoughtfulness in securing the esteem of his contemporaries, he left an elaborate journal, so just in its delineations, even of his own faults and mistakes, that general credence has been given to it, in his account of the conduct of his political rivals in the heat of action. If we were sure that this truly noble man was without mortal frailty, and that his fairness of statement was nowhere intended to win our confidence, but merely designed to do ample justice to his own side of controverted subjects, we might never seek the side-lights of history, or search to find the missing links between the differing historic accounts. 2

Governor Thomas Dudley was the only son of Captain

1 " And on me Frown not, old ghosts, if I be one of those Who make you utter things you did not say, And mould you all awry and mar your worth ; For whatsoever knows us truly, knows That none can truly write his single day, And none can write it for him upon earth."

(Tennyson's Memoirs, vol. i. xi.)

2 Mr. J. A. Doyle testifies that Winthrop is "not always a trustworthy authority." (J. A. Doyle's English in America, i. 239 note.) If self-interest made him untrustworthy on the heretics of Rhode Island, would not the same thing influence him in portraying the passions or avarice of his political rival? There is no other contemporaneous account of the passions or of the avarice of Thomas Dudley. The exact extent of them may therefore be a matter of doubt.

Roger Dudley, who was killed, it is said, in the battle of Ivry, in which, in 1590, Henry IV. of France gained a decisive victory over Mayenne. 1

Captain Dudley fought that day doubtless under Lord Willoughby, who is said to have commanded the English Protestants in that battle, and whose life five years before, on the field of Zutphen, Sir Philip Sidney saved but sacrificed his own, Sidney's death being one of the most memorable in the annals of the world. 2 There is a well-supported tradition in the Dudley family that Captain Roger Dudley was connected by birth with Sir Philip Sidney.

It was singular that Captain Roger, and later his son Thomas Dudley, who was still later the stanch Massachusetts Puritan, were both fighting at different periods, with commissions as captains in the British army granted to them by Queen Elizabeth, to place Henry of Navarre, the first Bourbon, upon the throne of France, who, regardless of the Protestants in the ranks of his army, exchanged his religion for a royal crown.

We have not at present satisfactory knowledge of the ancestry of Governor Dudley beyond his father, Roger Dudley ; but George Adlard says, in " The Sutton-Dudleys of England and the Dudleys of Massachusetts," 47, that " from the investigation I have made in relation to this family, I arrive at the conclusion that, though Governor Dudley was not descended in the direct line from John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, yet that both were descended from the same ancestry. Both use the same coat of arms." This seems to be the most reasonable result yet attained.

Dean Dudley says : " Captain Roger Dudley flourished in the time of Robert Dudley, Queen Elizabeth's famous Earl of Leicester, and appears to have been one of the soldiers sent over by the queen to aid Henry of Navarre to establish his throne. . . . The Dudleys of the Dudley Castle race were ever inclined to a military life. Captain Roger doubt-

1 Dean Dudley's History of Dudley Family, i. 24.

2 H. R. Fox Bourne's Sir Philip Sidney, 342.

4 THOMAS DUDLEY [ch. i

less belonged to this branch of his family." Mr. Dean Dudley says also that the wife of Roger Dudley "was a kinswoman of Augustine Nicolls of Faxton in Northamptonshire," and he thinks that Governor Thomas Dudley was drawn towards Puritanism by his mother's family." 1 Mr. Jacob Bailey Moore informs us that " there is a tradition among the descendants of Governor Thomas Dudley, in the eldest branch of the family, that he was descended from John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who was beheaded 22 February, 1 5 53." 2 Adlard says: "This tradition was not confined to the Rev. Samuel Dudley, the eldest branch, but has been perpetuated among the descendants of Governor Joseph Dudley." 3 We do not think that he was descended from the Duke of Northumberland, but that they had a common ancestry as stated by Adlard.

Anne Bradstreet, the daughter of Governor Thomas Dudley, " who wrote the first volume of poems published in New England," 4 declared in 1641, when the means of complete information were within her reach (for it was during her father's lifetime, who doubtless knew his ancestry), that she had the selfsame blood in her veins as Sir Philip Sidney. And with this abundant light on the subject she wrote, in her elegy upon Sir Philip Sidney (whose mother was the Lady Mary, eldest daughter of the above-named Duke of Northumberland, of the house of Dudley), as follows : —

" Let, then, none disallow of these my strains, Which have the selfsame blood yet in my veins."

She subsequently changed these lines, it is said, so that they now are : —

" Then let none disallow of these my strains Whilst English blood yet runs within my veins."

This change has been considered by some persons a revocation of her claim to relationship. 5 The modification does

1 Dean Dudley's History of Dudley Family, i. 17.

2 Memoirs of Am. Governors, 273.

8 G. Adlard's Sutton-Dudleys of England, 47.

4 See Duyckinck's Cyclopaedia of Amer. Lit., i. 52.

6 J. H. Ellis's Works of Anne Bradstreet, Int. xii.

not, however, seem to be a retraction of the claim. She may not have liked the personal, possibly boastful, allusion ; it was certain to be distasteful to her father. He did not indulge in that sort of thing ; he particularly concealed those matters which were of private concernment, and among them his ancestry. The change is in the direction of true art, of strict adherence to her theme.

She had, in the lines before these, enumerated the great merits of Sidney's work, mentioned the large esteem in which he was held, and lastly called attention to the love that England owed to him. It was not in good taste to exalt her own strains, for the reason that she was related to Sidney ; or to draw attention to herself, or to withdraw public thought from the far greater achievements of her hero. She had failed in these lines of her first edition to carry out her poetic conception to completion, and, like a sensible woman, when her next edition appeared she had corrected them. I am unable to find a word written by Anne Bradstreet disclaiming her relationship to Sidney. She knew from her father, her husband, and her family the fact which she had so simply related. We must cherish her significant testimony, for she was an actor in those busy scenes, and speaks as one having authority. The light of truth streams through her first verses.

Anne Bradstreet's claim to relationship is confirmed by the coats of arms both of Governor Thomas Dudley, placed on his last will by himself, and of Governor Joseph Dudley. They were a lion rampant, with a crescent for difference. These, it is asserted, belonged to only two branches of the Dudley family, both descended from the first Baron Dudley, who died in 1488.

Massachusetts was then English territory, and the laws of that country regulated and restricted the use of heraldic arms. They were then a distinguishing mark between noble families, and no high-minded person like Governor Dudley would assume the arms of another family, and no dishonest man would dare to do it.

6 THOMAS DUDLEY [ch. i

Titles to estates in England were held by virtue of the arms and escutcheons of ancestors ; they proved marriages and descent by them sometimes. 1

How well informed Governor Dudley was respecting his descent will be evident upon a moment's reflection. John Sutton, the first Baron Dudley of Dudley Castle, died only eighty-eight years before the birth of Thomas Dudley. Two successive barons, Edward the second and John the third Baron Dudley, had during that brief period lived and died ; while, within the same exact duration of time, Edmund Dudley, the merciless extortioner of Henry VII., who furnished a theme for Sir Thomas More in the " Utopia," 2 John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and Lord ' Guilford Dudley, his son, descending by another line from the' same first Baron Dudley, flourished and disappeared.

Sir Philip Sidney, the son of Mary Dudley, died at Zutphen when Thomas Dudley was ten -^ears of age ; and Robert, Earl of Leicester, the favorite of-^ueen Elizabeth, died when he was twelve years old. '

We can easily conceive Governor Dudley to have known individuals who had met every one of the above-named persons, from the first Baron Dudley down to his own times. If we recall his social relation in England, his thoughtful, scholarly habits, and, in advanced life, his extended public career, we may be morally certain that the history of every one of these personages was familiarly considered by him, and his personal relation to them thoroughly understood.

When, therefore, in 1653, he used the Sutton-Dudley seal on his will, he was not ignorant of his rights. He was trained to the law, and had long been a judge of it, and was always obedient to it in an exemplary manner. When he applied that coat of arms to his last will and testament, now preserved with probate records of Suffolk County, Mass., — one of the most solemn acts of his life, and nearly the final one, — he in effect affirmed that he was descended in

1 Sutton-Dudleys of England, 51 ; N. Am. Rev., c. 191.

direct lineage from the barons of Dudley Castle. 1 If, with his experience and knowledge, he did it wilfully with a purpose to cheat and to deceive as to his family, to claim what did not belong to him, to represent himself to be what he was not, or even to give to himself the benefit of a doubt, then that single last act of his life is in conflict with all the rest of his honest record.

His use of this seal under the circumstances tends, so far as the testimony of one honest man can go, to sustain the claim that he rightly appropriated it. The importance of this act on his part is greatly increased by the fact that it is the only known instance in which, after years of concealment and reserve, he suffered his ancestry to be revealed by himself in America. It seems to have been the solitary departure from a fixed purpose. His right is corroborated by his children, and by other evidence above mentioned.

The heralds may not recognize the claim, but the knowledge of Thomas Dudley himself is of far greater weight than their theories about the title. They may indeed refuse it, but it will not be the first time that legal titles have been lost by neglect, while the claim survives with every attribute except technicality and the letter of law.

Mr. John Fiske says : "Thomas Dudley came of an ancient family, the history of which, alike in the Old and in the New England, has not been altogether creditable." This is strictly true of every other family. It is harmless enough at first thought, but as you read and consider you feel that injustice is in it. It leaves a strong inference that the record of the family is dishonored below the average of ancient families, which we do not believe to be the fact.

There is much certainly to be satisfied with in the family history. Sir Philip Sidney said : " Though in all truth I may justly affirm that I am by my father's side of ancient and always well-esteemed and well-matched gentry, yet I do acknowledge I say that my chiefest honour is to be a Dud-

1 J. Timbs's Abbeys, Castles, etc., of England, 502 ; Penny Mag., xii. §3-

8 THOMAS DUDLEY ■ [ch. i

ley." l And his father, Sir Henry Sidney, wrote to the same purport in his famous letter of advice to Philip at school : " Remember, my son, the noble blood you are descended of by your mother's side ; and think that only by virtuous life and good action you may be an ornament to that illustrious family." 2

Governor Joseph Dudley has been both greatly praised and greatly blamed, chiefly because he was an Episcopalian and a royalist with Andros, although he was in fair repute later during thirteen years. We shall observe afterwards that some of his public services have added to the renown of himself and family.

His son, Chief Justice Paul Dudley, was very distinguished and beyond reproach, 3 and recognized as an eminent scholar on both sides of the ocean. Among the noted descendants of Governor Thomas Dudley, though not bearing his name, are to be mentioned Dr. William Ellery Channing, Richard H. Dana (father and son), Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, and Charles Eliot Norton. We might extend this list, but the fame of the family is safe with these names. 4

We are not, however, unmindful that the greatness of Governor Dudley arose not so much from his distinguished ancestry as from his own eminent life work.

Far above "the boast of heraldry, the pomp of power," is the imperishable renown of being one of the foremost among the founders of this great nation, dedicated to liberty, to the freedom of human thought, to the worth and excellence of individual character. It was, indeed, a memorable achievement to bring into this wilderness in the seventeenth century a civilization, laws, customs, and social life the most advanced in the world, and to plant them with such vigor and stability that they continue to flourish through all con-

1 Julia Cartwright's Dorothy Sidney, 4.

8 Excepting the association of himself with his father by the enemies of both.

4 Dean Dudley's History of Dudley Family.

flicts, with constantly extending potency over the continent, and in turn to react in unmeasured energy upon the progress and destiny of the Old World. " Let us praise famous men," saith the wise son of Sirach ; "the Lord hath wrought great glory by them through his great power from the beginning." 1

If Governor Dudley and his descendants may not claim kindred to the Sidneys, and have that claim allowed (which we do not admit), it is enough that he was an eminent founder of New England. There is no other epoch in human history from which so many great events have taken a turn.

It seems almost incredible to us that Governor Dudley should wish so utterly to burn all the bridges behind himself, sever all connection with his kindred and the land of his nativity, when he came to America to stay. He was, however, a Puritan, and regarded all human distinctions founded on family and blood as worthless. They had left the Old World to establish a new government in which only church members were to rule. Utopia was to be created, society was to appear in perfection. In this new, strange life the church, government, and social orders all underwent a rigid inspection to discern if there were any evil ways in them. In each institution they saw how vast the possibilities, and that, while tender memories and sacred associations attracted them to fatherland, with its endearing homes, matchless landscapes, and cultured life, yet they must forsake all these, restricted henceforth to the rugged but constantly broadening path of duty.

There seems to have been a prevalent disregard of descent and genealogies among these Puritans. Examination of the

1 " The true marshaling of the degrees of sovereign honor," says Lord Bacon, " are these : in the first place are ' conditores imperiorum,' founders of States and Commonwealths ; ... in the second place are ' legislatores,' 'lawgivers,' which are also called second founders, or 'perpetui principes ' (perpetual rulers), because they govern by their ordinances after they are gone." (Lord Bacon's Essays, lv.) Thomas Dudley is included in both of these classes.

io THOMAS DUDLEY [ch. I

lives of the governors of New Plymouth from 1620 to 1692, and of the governors of Massachusetts Bay from 1630 to 1689, consisting of sixteen biographical sketches, discloses only two governors, John Winthrop and Sir Henry Vane, whose descent J. B. Moore, in his " Memoirs of the American Governors," has traced beyond the second generation. In the instance of Winthrop we have only three Adam Winthrops in succession. A striking illustration of this dearth of genealogy among these people has been the but recently successful effort to ascertain who the father of Roger Williams was, or where he himself was born. These instances, and many more which might be given, show that these Puritans took no interest in such matters, indeed entertained an aversion to them. It is probable that they were too busy with the real concerns of life. In some cases, moreover, they had been disowned and discarded by their families because they had become Puritans. It may have been so on the Dudley side of Governor Dudley's family, if the theory is correct that he was influenced by his mother's family to become a Puritan. In all such cases it would be a painful subject to revert to, and the severance from their former home and kindred had been so absolute that they had no heart to open that closed and forever sealed volume of their lives. Governor Dudley lost his mother in infancy, it is said, and his father at fourteen years of age. His mother's name has not been preserved for us. He had one sister, probably younger than himself, of whom we know only that she survived their parents, and the orphans seem to have been left to the care of kind friends. Cotton Mather says Thomas Dudley " might say in his experience, that when he was forsaken of father and mother, then God took him up, and stirred up some friends that took special charge of him even in his childhood. 'Twas said that there was five hundred pounds left for him in an unknown hand, which was not so long concealed but that it came to light in due time, and was seasonably delivered into his own hands after he came to man's estate ; but before that time passed through many

1576-159°] EDUCATION u

changes wherein he found the goodness of God, both in way of protection and preservation, by all which experiences he was the better prepared for such eminent services for the Church of God which he was in after time called unto." 1

Mather adds that, in the minority and childhood of Dudley, " It pleased God to move the heart of one Mrs. Puefroy, a gentlewoman famed in the parts about Northampton for wisdom, piety, and works of charity : by her care he was trained up in some Latin school, wherein he learned the rudiments of his grammar, the which he improved afterwards by his own industry to considerable advantage, so as he was able even in his age to understand any Latin author as well as the best- clerk in the country that had been continually kept to study, which made it the more remarkable in the observation of some ministers, in whose hearing he was sometimes occasioned to read something out of a Latin book, who, by his false pronunciation, gathered he did not understand what he read, but upon further search and enquiry they found that he understood the language as well as themselves, although for want of school literature he missed the true pronunciation according to the rules of grammar to which children are exactly held at school ; and probably after the decease of his parents he had not opportunity of that advantage, so long as many children under their parents' wings failed to enjoy it." 2 It appears that the Puefroys were connected by marriage with the Dudley family, and this no doubt accounts for the assistance rendered to Dudley in his education by Mrs. Puefroy. Mather is so impressed with the wisdom and piety of Mrs. Puefroy that we can seem to see that she was in sympathy with his Puritanic thought, and that her influence may early have given direction to the religious sentiments of the boy, who was full of gratitude to her for extending a helping hand to him, and assisting him to an education which otherwise he could never have secured.