Papers of the Winthrop Family, Volume 2
1630-03-31
I receiued your first letters but on friday night last weeke, it seemes either the Carrier or the porter had forgot it; wherein you writt that I knowe that the letters I sent you were not welcome: beleiue me it was more then I knew, for doe you thinke I would sell my frind for sight 227of a letter that concerned not me for so small a trifle; the truth is this, my Master2 he opened your letters supposing they had come from your father3 and seeing the contrarie presentlie sealed them vp againe. Your letters last weeke and those this weeke I haue sent to Exeter, and the other secundam formam. I was with mr. Kirbie he hath not receiued the monie but is promised he shall haue it to morrowe. As for the other quae obscurè latet,*
Omnib
Barbara desires mrs. Vrsula to remember the Ruffes and cuffs. Verte.
This morninge, being about to seale my lettre, there came an honest man a Chyrurgeon on of Mr. Welds7 perish in Essex and Mr. Haynes8 man, to speake with my Master they both Aboraoluggehite myolneerys fiotro9 N: England. I haue sent them to Onterlamysa,10 the Chyrurgeon is an auncient man; he purposeth to goe about Mich
W. 2. 163; 4
Collections
, VI. 471–472. On Edward Howes, student of law, alchemist and mystic, clerk to Emmanuel Downing, friend of the younger John Winthrop, see his letters printed in this series;
D. N. B.
; and interesting remarks by James Russell Lowell in the North American Review, cv. 609–613 (1867).
Emmanuel Downing.
At Southampton.
Mary Downing, daughter of Emmanuel and Anne (Ware) Downing, stepdaughter of Lucy (Winthrop) Downing.
Balneum Mariae, Bain Marie, or Mary's bath, in alchemy, chemistry, and cookery, an apparatus for heating through the medium of water more gradually than directly by fire.
The Philosopher's Stone, I suppose. The alchemical jargon which follows has some resemblance to that in “The Times of the Stone,” in Elias Ashmole's Fasciculus Chemicus (1650), 267–268: “Sol coming into Pisces the worke is black, blacker then black . . . Cancer addeth the greatest whitenesse and splendour, and doth perfectly fill up all the dayes of the Stone or white Sulphur, or the Lunar worke of Sulphur, Luna sitting and reigning gloriously in her House.”
Thomas Weld, famous Puritan clergyman, vicar of Terling, co. Essex, whom we shall meet in later volumes as first pastor of the church in Roxbury, a leader in the Antinomian controversy, and afterwards as agent of the Massachusetts Colony in England.
John Haynes, “a gentleman of great estate,” came over in 1633 in the Griffin with Cotton and Hooker, to be governor successively of Massachusetts and Connecticut.
This method of secret writing, of which we had an example in Vol. I. 376, is read by taking only the alternate letters: “they both brought money for New England.”
Nelms, Hornchurch, co. Essex, the seat of Sir Robert Naunton, often visited by Emmanuel Downing as one of the attorneys of the Court of Wards and Liveries. See Vol. I. 380, 390, 404.
“Mr. Weld hath sent thirty pounds.”