Governor Winthrop's Return to Boston: An Interview with a Great Character

Governor Winthrop's Return to Boston

On the seventeenth day of September, A.D. 1880, the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the town of Boston, the event was commemorated, among other ways, by the inauguration of the statue of John Winthrop, in Scollay Square. He is represented by the renowned sculptor in the garb of a gentleman of his day, holding in his hand the royal charter of the Massachusetts Colony, which he brought over with him.

His serene countenance falls like a benediction upon this city of ours, which shows a wonderful and prosperous growth. He may be said to be the founder of the First Church of Boston, of the City itself, and of this Christian Commonwealth,—a threefold distinction. To have been the founder of a single one of these would have insured his immortal fame.

He was also the author of the covenant of the First Church, which was gathered in Charlestown, Aug. 27, 1630, and which soon after removed to the Boston side of Charles River. The covenant is in these words:—

"In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and in obedience to His holy and divine ordinance,—

"We, whose names are hereunder written, being by His most wise and good providence brought together into this part of America, in the Bay of Massachusetts, and desirous to unite ourselves into one congregation or church, under the Lord Jesus Christ, our Head, in such sort as becometh all those whom He hath redeemed and sanctified to Himself, do hereby solemnly and religiously (as in His most holy presence) promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our ways according to the rule of the Gospel and in all sincere conformity to His holy ordinances, and in mutual love and respect, each to other, so near as God shall give us grace."

Probably there are very few, if any, original documents in America of so ancient a date which have been preserved, and which are still in force, as this identical covenant, which has been signed and kept by hundreds in each generation for nearly three centuries. Far superior to the Andover creed, or to any other creed of seminary, council, or church, it has ever been a bond of union, and not a bone of contention. Aptly phrased and including all the essential conditions of a vital church organization, it will stand for centuries to come, and will outlast all creeds of human invention, ever promoting beneficence and charity.

This poem represents the spirit of Governor Winthrop returning to the city and the capital of the Christian Commonwealth he had founded, and taking possession of the bodily form which the artist has reproduced of him, clothed in his own antique costume. He surveys the extended limits of Boston, including Charlestown, with Bunker Hill Monument, and four other townships with hundreds of church steeples pointing to the sky. He misses from the old site on Cornhill the single house of worship where Wilson and Cotton preached, and where he was wont to expound; but soon he descries from afar, in his mind's eye, standing where, in his time, the waves of the sea were surging, the beautiful church edifice and the elegant chapel where five hundred Sunday-scholars are weekly taught. He dwells with supreme satisfaction upon the good deeds done by the church he established, and predicts for it a still more prosperous future and a greater spiritual growth. He recognizes only two things which existed in his day, and have remained unchanged,—the church covenant he wrote, as it were, by inspiration, or at least by a wise forecast of future needs, and the Communion cup he gave, which has singularly escaped the hazards of fire and the chances of time, and which has been, ever since, constantly used in the holy commemorative service.

Upon these almost universal changes he makes some appropriate reflections. To "sit in the stocks" was a punishment commonly imposed in his time for various offences. Richard Frothingham, in his "History of Charlestown," gives a view of the stocks that were set in the market-place with this mode of punishment applied. The view is here reproduced. "It was much used," says Frothingham, "and several times repaired. A sentence by the selectmen for 'drinking to excess,' shows that one hour's sitting in the stocks could be compromised by paying 3s. 4d. money." Winthrop, of course, would be struck with the different use of the word now so frequently spoken. From the fact that all investments of his day are swept out of existence, he predicts that the properties now held as most secure and reliable will in as long a time disappear. He illustrates the superiority of man, in his own best estate, to all worldly possessions.

Sitting in the stocks

His allusion to the vision of Rev. John Wilson, the first minister of the church, recalls the following passage in his diary as quoted by Hon. Robert C. Winthrop in his "Life and Letters of John Winthrop," vol. 2, page 108.

"The pastor of Boston, Mr. Wilson, a very sincere, holy man, … told the governour that, before he was resolved to come into this country, he dreamed he was here, and that he saw a church arise out of the earth, which grew up and became a marvellous goodly church."

The present church edifice well answers this description; built with exquisite taste after a most appropriate design, and bearing the palm of all the costly churches in the new part of Boston for fitness, beauty, and permanency.

First Church in Boston. Corner of Berkeley and Marlborough Streets.

The Thursday Lecture, which was the special clerical and social occasion of his time, he finds abolished; and he observes that the Thursday Evening Club is now a characteristic feature of Boston. This was formed for social, scientific, and literary objects. Among its founders and early members were Edward Everett, a member of First Church, and Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, the distinguished descendant and representative of the Winthrop family. The one referred to in this interview as the then leader of the Club was its late President, William B. Rogers. He was a man of superior scientific attainments, with a power of apt expression and a felicity and fluency of utterance indeed remarkable. By his efforts and influence the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was established,—a lasting monument of his zeal for technical science, the most needed factor in popular education. In making an address to the Institute at its Commencement exercises, May 30, 1882, he was struck with death; he left the very place of his heart's and life's devotion for the spirit land of Winthrop. His predecessors in the office of President of the Club were John C. Warren, the nephew of General Joseph Warren, Edward Everett, J. Mason Warren, and Bishop Manton Eastburn. The historic mantle of the office has now been cast on Colonel Theodore Lyman, upon whose well-stored and lofty head honors have fallen thick, but no faster than merited.

Josiah Quincy the elder, the second on the roll of Boston's distinguished Mayors, declared that the City might well adopt Winthrop as its patron saint. His was an ideal, saintly life, and his character, in a sense, supernatural. He bore success and defeat in a political election with like equanimity, a trait that, as it were, by a law of heredity marks with special honor his living representative. Whether in office or out, and possessing large estates or, one after another, deprived of them, he kept his mind active and his brain industriously working for the development of a higher social life under Christian culture in a virgin land, by his leadership, under the Providence he devoutly acknowledged, to be fitted and fashioned for a new and powerful country, of which Boston was to be a memorable city.

Nor could he fail to remark upon the location of the statue set up in his honor in Scollay Square, rather than on Boston Common, which he had laid out and secured to posterity. The City Square in Charlestown, where he first unrolled the old charter of the Colony before the new government at its first meeting here, would have been a better site for it than the one selected.

Difficult it is, indeed, to set down in worthy lines the remembrance of the interview herein depicted. Of course, it has been faintly and inadequately done. Let us hope, however, that, should Winthrop's spirit, two or three centuries hence, visit again the last and most eventful scenes of his earthly life, he will find Boston, though changed anew, yet vastly improved, keeping pace with all developments for the good of an ever advancing race, and second to none in the Commonwealth or Nation in true excellence and progress.

AN INTERVIEW WITH A GREAT CHARACTER.

A Poem

Portrait of Rev. John Wilson.

The Winthrop Cup.