In 1638 the General Court of Massachusetts opened a theological school at the then Newtown, and placed over it as master Nathaniel Eaton. The next year Eaton fled, to escape arrest for wasting the funds, and for whipping the students more than was proper, he often giving them from twenty to thirty stripes at a time, and also severely flogging the tutor; his wife, too, had starved the students in their commons. At about that time the town was re-named Cambridge, from the place where several of the Colonists had been educated; while "the School" was dignified to Harvard College. In 1639 its first class was entered on a threeyears' course of study, Nathaniel Brewster coming from Plymouth as one of its members. In 1640 Henry Dunster was made the first president of the College by that title. He had just come from the English Cambridge, and though but thirty years old, the youngest president the institution has ever chosen, he stands among the highest on the list for learning and ability. His duties were varied. Now he was giving instruction in Hebrew,2 Syriac, or Chaldaic, which were all in the regular course; anon he was accounting with his steward, to whom most of the College receipts came in, for cattle, sheep, goats, meat, sugar, malt, parsnips, butter, satin, kersey, cottons, nails, and especially maize.3 Once, at least, the authorities required him to personally flog two of his junior class, with some ceremony, they having committed burglary, and there then being no law in Massachusetts against that crime. One of the above culprits graduated the next year in good standing, and received his degree. 1 He was Nathaniel Briscoe. Eaton became an Episcopal clergyman in Virginia, and Winthrop dismisses him from notice with the acid remark he was "usually drunken, as is the custom there." 2 The great test in Hebrew was Isaiah iii., on the "bravery" of women. Among the receipts were: a sheep of 67 lbs., £1 1s.; 35 lbs. sugar; a fat cow; a calf; a quarter of beef; 3 yards yellow cotton; 2,000 nails; and a goat from Watertown, which died. Even Governor Dudley paid his son's tuition in corn. The father of one of them, Nathaniel Ward, pastor of Ipswich, was also educated as a lawyer, and framed the first statute-book of Massachusetts. He is 1638-47.] HARVARD COLLEGE. - PRINTING. 425 In 1647 Dunster reported that the College building needed much repair, from its "yearly decays" and "first evil contrival." The next year he complained of spurious wampumpeag, saying there was much "false peag," "badd and unfinished;" the beads from the dark part of the shell having twice the value of white, he said that "the endeans" were circulating "dyed peag." As this currency was much used by the whites, the fraud probably injured the College treasury.2 The president, however, was equal to all the calls upon him, and gave the young College much strength and character. Dunster, too, was closely connected with the introduction of printing into this country. In 1638 Mr. Glover, an English clergyman, sailed with his wife for Boston, bringing a printingpress and an exceedingly illiterate printer named Stephen Day Glover died on the voyage, but his widow, who had property, bought a house at Cambridge. There the press was set up by Day, and its first known production was the "Freeman's Oath" for official use; the second was an almanac for 1639, calculated for New England by our old friend "William Peirse, Mariner," former captain of the "Anne," "Lion," and best known by a long and fearful religious poem, "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam." In the 181st stanza, the souls of unbaptized infants having forcibly pleaded their innocence of Adam's sin, the Divine Judge is represented as replying: "A Crime it is! Therefore in Bliss You may not hope to dwell; But unto you I shall allow In 1646 Ward, returning to England, made the College a parting gift of six hundred acres of land; so his son's punishment did not disaffect him. In England, however, he was ill-natured toward New England, and told falsehoods about it. In 1674 Thomas Sargeant, probably a junior, was ordered by the overseers to be flogged for blasphemy. The students were gathered in the library; the president then made a prayer; next Sargeant knelt, and was flogged by Goodman Healey; then the president closed the instructive exercises with another prayer. There probably was far less disgrace attached to this whipping than to Sargeant's further penalty of sitting by himself at meals and eating without wearing his hat. For the first century of the College, chastisement was a common penalty, and was freely inflicted by the tutors, without involving any great discredit on the culprit. 1 First building finished, 1639. 2 In 1644 Pynchon, of Springfield, complained that Printer Day, of Cambridge, had paid him some "blue wampum," not worth half price. An English printer progenitor was John Day; born 1522, died 1584. "Mayflower;" the third was the famous "Bay Psalm-book."1 Dunster, by private solicitation and much cost to himself, succeeded in building a president's house, and to it he carried Mrs. Glover as his wife. He also took the press into his house, and kept it there until his own removal in 1654. Before the latter date Day had departed, and his place was taken by Captain Samuel Green, - the ancestor of a noble line of printers, booksellers, and writers.2 In 1654 this pioneer 1 This had 147 leaves; a good copy now being worth $1,200 to $1,500. Yet it was not the first book printed in America (it was practically the first in northern North America); for a school-book, "The Spiritual Ladder," had been printed in Mexico a hundred and seven years before, and was followed there and in Peru by at least a hundred other books from the Spanish Jesuit priests. The first press at Boston was set up in 1674; at Exeter (Eng.), eleven years after the Cambridge press; at Manchester a hundred years later; and at Liverpool a hundred and ten years. 2 Green probably came over in 1632, and was long the town clerk of Cambridge and captain of the train-band; he died 1702, “very old.” He seems to have turned his business over to his son Samuel, for Sewall records in 1690 that Printer Green and wife died of small-pox. In 1692 an inventory of the property in his office belonging to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, etc., was as follows: Utensils for printing, belonging to the corporation in the Costody of Samuell Green, of Cambridge, Printer, Sept. 1, 1662. The presse with what belongs to it, with one tinn pan and two Frisletts. Item-Two tables of cases for letters with one olde case; the foutt of letters, together with the imperfections that came since. Item-one brass bed, one imposing stone, 2 bbls. of ink, 3 chases, 2 composing sticks, ley brush, 2 candlesticks-1 for the cases, the other for the press. Item- the frame and box for the cistern. Item- the riglet brass and scabbard, the sponge, 1 galley, 1 mallet, shooting stick, and furniture for the chases. Item - the letters that came before, that were mingled with the colleges. Only printers will be likely to recognize the “tinn pan” and “frisletts,” for tympan and friskets. Two years later a request was sent to the Society for a font of pica, both "Roman and Italian" (italic). Day lost his money in an attempt to found Lancaster; he then worked under Green, and died 1668, æt. 58. This volume bears the imprint of the present "University Press," whose building lies within a stone's-throw of the old quarters, and which has outgrown the wildest conceptions of Day and Green. It now employs some three hundred persons, who, with a hundred tons of type and some forty printing-presses, are kept busy in carrying on that work so happily begun two and a half centuries ago in Dunster's back room. Of the present owners, - John Wilson and Charles E. Wentworth, - a remarkable coincidence is that Mr. Wentworth in the due fitness of things followed Dunster's example and married a descendant of Rev. Mr. Glover. Mr. Wilson's father (his predecessor) put forth a system of punctuation which perhaps guides more printers in these dubious matters than any other one book extant. 1653-9-] DUNSTER. 427 "University Press " had passed into the control of the Colonial Commissioners and the Society for Propagating the Gospel in New England, which in 1658 printed Eliot's Indian Bible. In 1653 Dunster began to preach against infant baptism, and so vigorously that Pastor Mitchell of Cambridge declared his own faith to have been shaken, until he reminded himself that such teaching could come only "from the EVIL ONE!" When the pastor was baptizing an infant, the next year, Dunster arose and "bore testimony" against the ceremony. He was tried for disturbing the ordinance, being sentenced to admonition in public, and to give bonds for future good behavior. Public feeling was such that he felt obliged to resign his office. The overseers found that £40 was due him, and recommended that £100 besides be paid on account of his eminent services. The General Court, almost with contumely, refused compliance; and it was not till several years afterward that they gave his widow £20 in payment of the debt of £40. It was only by pitiful solicitation that Dunster obtained the Court's leave to remain through the winter of 1654-5, with his dangerously sick family, in that house which he had built for the College at much loss to himself. Chauncey had been frozen-out at Scituate on charges of Anabaptistry, which was something vague and variable in its meaning. Dunster had been frozen-out at the College also on a charge of Anabaptistry. Yet Chauncey was at once invited to Dunster's chair, and the next spring Dunster took his library and head of cattle to Chauncey's old parish in Scituate, where he established his home. There he occasionally preached; and as, like Chauncey, he was a regularly educated physician, probably practised as such. He won the regard of the liberal leaders Hatherly and Cudworth, and joined them in pleading for leniency toward the Quakers, whose tenets he powerfully opposed. Dunster died in Scituate in 1659, when only forty-nine years old. His heart ever yearned toward the College which had cast him out, and to which he made gifts, as well as to some persons who had been active in displacing him. He also asked to be buried beside the College. His body in its coffin was packed in the herb tansy, probably for safer conveyance, and in time was removed to the old buryingground opposite the College grounds.1 Several of his successors in office have, by different generations, been laid beside him, and the spot is called "Presidents' Corner." One who knows Dunster's history is not likely to visit that grave and read his epitaph without unwonted emotion. Chauncey, to obtain the office, promised to keep to himself his views upon immersion and evening communion. He had made constant sacrifices for conscience' sake, and for these very principles had left comfort and dignity at Plymouth for privation and strife at Scituate; that he should surrender them now, even to the extent of silent acquiescence, is marvellous." Still, he did not find bed of roses. In his first year he was forced to complain to the General Court of the scantiness of his support, though they had agreed to provide for him liberally; the Indian corn, in which much of his income was paid, could only be traded for family supplies by losing 8d. to 12d. on a bushel; he had no farm and cattle, as Dunster had; he had been forced to use £100 of his own funds; and if no change should be made, he might look for another place. In 1663 his troubles were not only unremoved, but he was in debt, and tempted to go elsewhere. The deputies proposed to increase his £100 stipend to £120, but the Council refused concurrence. After his death his sons, representing the great straits in which he had been during his entire term of office, modestly asked that the arrears of his salary be paid "in money," and their invalid brother aided. This was done. 1 In 1846 Dunster's monument was so broken and illegible that its identity was doubted. An exhumation showed the body still surrounded by its packing of tansy; the features were traceable, a short brown beard remaining on the upper lip. Chauncey, however, was under no restrictions in expressing his opinion of men's wearing long hair; and this he preached against as abominable in the sight of God, and one of the crying sins of the land. Governor Endicott, on succeeding Winthrop in 1649, hastened to procure a law against long hair, — though his own portrait presents him "bearded like the pard." The Apostle Eliot was sharp against long hair, as well as wigs, and sagely attributed the Indian war to God's wrath thereat. |