This dispersion was a great grief to the company, but it was only as the beginning of sorrows. “They who had health,” says Dudley, “fell to building, wherein many were interrupted by sickness and death. Deaths were for some time of almost daily occurrence. Dissatisfaction prevailed in many minds, and when the ships returned to England, about a hundred returned with them; thus was the company again winnowed of the faithless and faint-hearted. The ships being gone,” continues Dudley, “victuals wasting, and mortality increasing, we held divers fasts in our several congregations. But the Lord would not be deprecated; and among many other deaths, on the 30th of September died Mr. Johnson, the Lady Arabella, his wife, being dead a month before. This gentleman was a prince amongst us, zealous for religion, and the greatest furtherer of this plantation.” The deaths of these two excellent people caused, say some of their fellow-sufferers, “not only weeping eyes but fainting hearts, fearing the fall of the present work.” Johnson was buried at the upper end of his lot of land, in the faith of his rising in it. This ground became the first burial-place in Boston, others desiring to be laid round his grave. The Lady Arabella was daughter of the third Earl of Lincoln; “she came,” says Hubbard, “from a paradise of plenty and pleasure into a wilderness of wants;” “and,” adds Cotton Mather, quaintly, “she took New England in her way to heaven.” One of the ships who conveyed over this company of emigrants was called, in honour of her, the Arabella. She was buried at Salem, the place of her interment being still respected; and a girls’ grammar-school in Boston now bears her name. Of those who came from England in April, 200, at least, had died by December. Governor Winthrop, whose son was drowned the very day of his landing, writing to his wife, says, “I have lost twelve of my family; the Lord’s hand hath been heavy upon me;” yet he assures her, “I would not have altered my course though I had foreseen all these afflictions; I never had more content of mind.” They who survived were not discouraged, but bearing God’s corrections with humility, and trusting in his mercies, they bore in mind “how after a lower ebb God had raised up their neighbours at Plymouth.” Through all their afflictions and sufferings, these steadfast men and women, who saw the hand of God in all things, never omitted the sacred duties of the Sabbath, though they had to assemble in the open fields or beneath the forest trees—God was ever present with them; and little children in the hour of death became transfigured, as it were, and testifying of their faith and their assurance of immortality, were a marvel to all.