Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 5 (of 8): The English and French in North America 1689-1763
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 5 (of 8): The English and French in North America 1689-1763
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
This follows a red-chalk drawing in the cabinet of the Antiquarian
Society at Worcester, which came to it with other portraits by the
bequest of the Rev. William Bentley, of Salem (b. Boston, June 22,
1759; d. Salem, December 29, 1819). There is another likeness in the
_Mem. Hist. Boston_, ii. 227. Cf. Catal. _Cab. Mass. Hist. Soc._, p.
37.]
During the night of the 29th of October, 1727, New England experienced
one of the severest earthquakes which she had known. The next morning
Cotton Mather made a speech in Boston, and this, with an account of
the earthquake’s effects, was published at once as _The Terror of the
Lord_, followed shortly by his _Boanerges_, intended to strengthen
the impressions of the awful hour in the minds of the people. Haven’s
bibliography shows the affluence of the ministerial mind in the face
of this event.[257] Sermon after sermon was published, and the press
had not ceased issuing the renewed editions of some of them when Cotton
Mather died on the 13th of February, 1728, and gave the preachers
another fruitful theme. Here was a man whose views of a fitting mundane
life were as repulsive as those of Sebastian Rasle, and whose scalp
would have aroused Quebec as Rasle’s did Boston. We have grown to judge
each by a higher standard than the prejudices and doctrines of their
time.[258]
* * * * *
After the departure of Shute, Wentworth continued as
lieutenant-governor in the executive chair of New Hampshire. The
assembly tried to insist upon a speaker whom he disapproved, but the
explanatory charter of Massachusetts came to Wentworth’s support, and
he prevailed; and under his lead the province experienced its share
of the Indian warfare. Rhode Island remained all the time under Gov.
Cranston, who had held the office by election thirty successive years
when he died in 1727. Her chief point of contact with her neighbors
was her bills of credit, which had sunk so low that they had become
little better than a pest to herself and to the neighboring colonies.
Connecticut kept her activity and quiet ways within herself. She took
no part in the war beyond putting her border towns in a state of
defence.
* * * * *
Shute was pursuing his aim in England. He had succeeded in getting
from the king an explicit threat, under whose pressure it was thought
the Massachusetts assembly would see the advisability of establishing
a fixed salary for the royal governor, when George I. died (June 11,
1727), and Shute’s commission was vacated. He slipped into a pension of
£600 a year, and died an old man. The news of the king’s death reached
Boston in August, and on the 14th George II. was proclaimed with
military parade. The ministers beguiled themselves, as usual, preaching
many sermons on the death of a good king, and Mather Byles published a
poem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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