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Papers of the Winthrop Family, Volume 2

Thursdaye 8.

8 July 1630

friday 27:

27 August 1630
Aug: 20. Saterday
Winthrop, John

1630-08-20

The French shippe called the Guifte came into the harbour at Charlton: she had been 12: weekes at sea and lost one passinger and 12: goates. she delivered 6.1

mundaye we kept a Court.2

1.

Particulars about these and other vessels subsequently mentioned will be found in Banks, The Winthrop Fleet. For Dudley's statement that seventeen ships arrived safely in New England during 1630, in spite of unfavorable winds, fogs, and storms, see Young, Chronicles, 311, where Prince's list is printed in a note. See also letters of E. Howes, April 16, and William Peirse, November 18, 1630, in this volume; and a letter of Samuel Fuller to Governor Bradford, Charlestown, August 2, 1630, 1 Collections , III. 76. Writing of the arrival of a ship (the William and Thomas) “Saturday last,” Fuller continues: “I here but lose time and long to be at home, I can do them no good, for I want drugs, and things fitting to work with: I purpose to be at home this week . . . I requested the Governour to bear [me] company, who is desirous to come, but faith he cannot be absent two hours.” This ship, also called the Thomas and William, Captain William Bundick, was sent out by Thomas Hewson, who, like Cradock, maintained his own plantation in New England — probably at Marblehead.

2.

The Records of Massachusetts, I. 73, show that this Court of Assistants was held Monday, August 23. Savage called attention to the fact that the dates of the two entries preceding this one were erroneous: “Thursday 18” and “August 20 Saterday” are not possible dates for August, 1630. That the dates below the blank space refer to August, and not July, is proved by Winthrop's letter to his wife under date of September 9, where he writes of the Gift as having arrived “about a fortnight since.” That Winthrop, who assisted at the wedding of Endecott, should not know the first name of the latter's second wife, would seem to show that this entry was made at a considerably later date. If so, an error in dating would be likely. During the rest of the year 1630, Thursday fell on the eighteenth only in November, for which month the first few entries seem to have been written with the same finely-pointed quill as the entry in question. The ink of the cancellation and the correction “by the Governor and mr. Wilson” is of the same decidedly brown color as that with which the entries for December, 1630, were made.

Those attending this first Court were: John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Roger Ludlow, Edward Rossiter, Increase Nowell, Thomas Sharpe, William Pynchon, and Simon Bradstreet. For an interesting treatment of the influence of the government of the English guild on the government of the English colonies in America, as for instance, in the establishing and naming of the “Court of Assistants,” and the term “freeman,” see New England Historical and Genealogical Register, LVII. Isaac Bassett Choate, “The Town Guild,” 168–177, especially 172–173.