Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2Hoar, George Frisbie
History
Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2
Hoar, George Frisbie
United States -- History -- 1865-1921; United States -- Politics and government -- 1865-1900
Fortunately we are able to settle the question about which
Lord Campbell and Lord Bacon and Lord Clarendon were misled,
in Old Concord. Peter Bulkeley was the uncle of Oliver St.
John. He speaks of him in his will, and leaves him his Bible.
Bulkeley's Gospel-Covenant, a book the substance of which
was originally preached to his congregation, is dedicated
to Oliver St. John. In the Epistle Dedicatory, he speaks
of the pious and godly lives of St. John's parents, and alludes
to the dying words of St. John's father as something which
he and St. John had heard, but which was not known to other
men. "I speak a mystery to others but not unto your Lordship."
So it is quite clear that St. John could not have been born
out of wedlock, and the son of a man who had seduced the
sister of this eminent and pious clergyman.
In Noble's "Memoirs of the Cromwell Family," published about
seventy-five years after the death of St. John, he is said
to be the son of Oliver St. John of Cagshoe in Bedfordshire.
When the "Lives of the Chief Justices" was first published,
I wrote to Lord Campbell, telling him these facts, and received
the following letter in reply:
LONDON, July 9th, 1861.
_Sir_
I thank you very sincerely for your interesting letter of
December 13th, respecting Lord Chief Justice St. John. I
think you establish his legitimacy quite satisfactorily and
in any future edition of my Lives of the Chief Justices I
shall certainly avail myself of your researches.
I have the honor to be
Sir
Your obliged and obedient Servant
CAMPBELL.
The Honorable
Geo. F. Hoar.
Something of Bulkeley's character may be gathered from this
extract from the Gospel-Covenant, which Mr. Emerson, who was
his descendant, loved to quote. Think of these words, uttered
to his little congregation in the wilderness; the only company
of white men in the Western Hemisphere who dwelt away from
tide-water:
"And for ourselves, the people of New England, wee should
in a speciall manner, labour to shine forth in holinesse
above other people; we have that plenty and abundance of
ordinances and meanes of grace as few people enjoy the like;
wee are as a City set upon a hill, in the open view of all
the earth, the eyes of the world are upon us, because wee
professe ourselves to be a people in Covenant with God, and
therefore not only the Lord our God, with whom we have made
Covenant, but heaven and earth, Angels and men, that are witnesses
of our profession, will cry shame upon us, if we walk contrary
to the Covenant which we have professed to walk in; if we
open the mouthes of men against our profession, by reason
of the scandalousnesse of our lives, wee (of all men) shall
have the greater sinne.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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