"By handfuls the silver was poured in one side Till it weighed from the floor blushing Betsy, the bride; And the mint-master called: 'Prithee, Sewell, my son, The horses are saddled, the wedding is done; Behold the bride's portion; and know all your days Your wife is well worth every shilling she weighs.'" Edmund Quincy married at twenty-one, and became the next occupant of the mansion. During his long life there were welcomed to the hospitable roof many of those whose words and deeds prepared the way for the liberty that was to come to the country within a century. The second of the Quincy line was a leader in the town. At one time he was its representative in the General Court, and as colonel of the Suffolk Regiment, he was the first of a long list of colonels in the family. But the day came when it was written of him, "Unkel Quincy grows exceeding crazy," and in 1698 the second Edmund yielded the house to Edmund the third. This Edmund also became a colonel and a representative and, later, a judge of the Supreme Court. His pastor said of him, "This great man was of a manly Stature and Aspect, of a Strong Constitution and of Good Courage, fitted for any Business of Life, to serve God, his King and Country." Not only did he enlarge the glory of the family, but, in 1706, he enlarged the house, yet in such a way that the original Coddington house could be clearly traced after the improvements were finished. Judge Sewell, the cousin of the builder, was one of the welcome occupants of the improved house. On his way to Plymouth he stopped at "Braintry." "I turned in to Cousin Quinsey," he said, "where I had the pleasure to see God in his Providence shining again upon the Persons and Affairs of the Family after long distressing Sickness and Losses. Lodged in the chamber next the Brooke." Later on another chamber near the brook was provided for Mrs. Quincy's brother, Tutor Flynt of Harvard, when he came that way for rest and change. The oldest child of this generation was Edmund, whose daughter, Dorothy Quincy, married John Hancock, while the fourth child was Dorothy Quincy, the great-grandmother of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The continuity of life at the mansion was sadly broken when, within a year, the grandmother, the mother, and the father died. The death of the latter occurred in England, where he had gone on business for the colony. When news came of the ending of his life, the General Court of Massachusetts declared that "he departed the delight of his own people, but of none more than the Senate, who, as a testimony of their love and gratitude, have ordered this epitaph to be inscribed on his tomb in Bunhill Fields, London."