It is the fourth and last published volume of Dr. Palfrey’s _History of New England_ (Boston, 1875) which comes within the period of the present chapter, bringing the story, however, down only to 1741, but a continuation is promised from a MS. left by the author, and edited by General F. W. Palfrey, his son, which will complete the historian’s plan by continuing the narrative to the opening of the war of independence. This fourth volume is amply fortified with references and notes, in excess of the limitations which governed the earlier ones. The author says in his preface that he may be thought in this respect “to have gone excessively into details, and I cannot dispute [he adds] the justness of the criticism; such at present is the uncontrollable tendency of my mind.” [Illustration: JOHN GORHAM PALFREY. The editor is indebted to Gen. F. W. Palfrey for the excellent photograph after which this engraving is made.] In 1866 Dr. Palfrey published a popular abridgment of his first three volumes in two smaller ones. These were reissued in August, 1872, with a third, and in 1873 with a fourth, which completed the abridgment of his larger work, and carried the story from the accession of Shirley to power down to the opening of the military history of the American Revolution. In this admirably concise form, reissued in 1884, with a thorough index, the work of the chief historian of New England is known as _A compendious History of New England from the Discovery by Europeans to the first general Congress of the Anglo-American Colonies_,—the last summarized chapter in the work not being recognized in the title.[347] MASSACHUSETTS.—For this as well as for the period embraced in the third volume of the present history,[348] Thomas Hutchinson’s _History of Massachusetts Bay_ is of the highest importance. Hutchinson says that he was impelled to write the history of the colony from observing the repeated destruction of ancient records in Boston by fire, and he complains that the descendants of some of the first settlers will neither use themselves nor let others use the papers which have descended to them. He seems, however, to have had the use of the papers of the elder Elisha Cooke. He acknowledges the service which the Mather library, begun by Increase Mather, and in Hutchinson’s time owned by Samuel Mather, who had married Hutchinson’s sister, was to him.