the abrupt close of the college course of John Winthrop either to his grievous sickness, or to his love for Mary Forth, daughter and sole heir of John Forth, Esq., of Great Stambridge. We incline rather to the latter alternative as the stronger one, inasmuch as love for Mary may not only have been the direct cause of his loathing Cambridge, but may even have been the cause of his sickness, which in that case becomes so secondary a cause as hardly to be a cause at all. One thing is certain: our honored Puritan ancestors had no scruples against short engagements, early marriages, or rematings as often as circumstances favored. The young bridegroom himself, in the record of his experience, which we quote again for another purpose, reserves the confession of any haste on his own part to enter the married state, and would seem delicately to insinuate parental influence in the case. "About eighteen years of age, being a man in stature & understanding, as my parents conceived me, I married into a family under Mr. Culverwell his ministry in Essex, &, living there sometimes, I first found ye ministry of the word come home to my heart with power (for in all before I found only light): & after that, I found ye like in ye ministry of many others: so as there began to be some change: wh. I perceived in myself, & others took notice of." Six children were born to John Winthrop and his first wife,--three sons and three daughters. John, the eldest of these, afterwards Governor of Connecticut, was born February 22, 1606. Mary, the only one of the daughters surviving infancy, also came to this country, and married a son of Governor Thomas Dudley. In less than eleven years after her marriage, Mary Forth died, the husband being not yet twenty-eight years old, and the eldest child but nine.