The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the PeopleEggleston, Edward
History
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
"We trust you will not be unmindful of the main end of our Plantation,
by endeavouring to bring the Indians to a knowledge of the Gospel."
Cradock's letter to Endecott, February 16, 1629, Young's Chronicle,
133; also the official letter, ibid., page 142, where the "propagation
of the Gospel" among whites and Indians is the "aim." The Royal
Charter itself declared that "to win and invite the natives of the
country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and
Saviour of mankind ... is the principal end of this Plantation." (A
similar provision was inserted in the Connecticut Charter in 1662, in
imitation of that of Massachusetts.) The common seal of the
Massachusetts colony, sent over in 1629, bore an Indian with the
inscription, "Come over and help us." Young's Chronicles of
Massachusetts, 155, Instructions to Endecott. The paper of "Reasons,"
attributed to Winthrop, keeps the conversion of the Indians in view,
but it is blended with that which was in his mind the main end, the
founding of a Puritan church. The first paragraph reads, "It will be a
service to the Church of great consequence to carry the Gospell into
those parts of the world, to helpe on the comminge of the fullnesse of
the Gentiles, & to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of
Ante-Christ which the Jesuites labour to reare up in those parts."
Life and Letters of Winthrop, i, 309. The copy of this paper in Sir
John Eliot's handwriting has a preamble written in a nervous style
that may well be Eliot's own. This preamble goes back to the
conversion of the Indians as a main purpose. The Antapologia of T.
Edwards, 1644, declares that White of Dorchester and others had the
conversion of the Indians in view in promoting emigration to New
England. Edwards says, page 41, that the establishing of
Congregational churches "was not in the thoughts of them that were the
first movers in that or of the ministers that were sent over in the
beginning." The statement is quite too strong, but the ecclesiastical
purpose seems to have grown rapidly when the number of emigrants
revealed the greatness of the opportunity.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 204.]
Cotton Mather says, Magnalia, Book II, chap. iv, 3, that Winthrop was
made a justice at eighteen, but Mather's account of anything marvelous
needs support. Winthrop held his first court at Groton Hall several
months after he had attained his majority. Life and Letters, i, 62.
Compare page 223 of the same volume.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 205.]
Of his election to the governorship he wrote to his wife, "The onely
thinge that I have comforte of in it is, that heerby I have assurance
that my charge is of the Lorde & that he hath called me to this
worke." Life and Letters, i, 340.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 208.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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