240 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2n« S. VII. Mar. 19. '59. 



3Siep\ieS, 



GOVEENOB HUTCHINSOK's MSS. 



(2"'^S. vii. 111. 179.) 



In reply to Mr. Pishet Thompson, the able 

 historian of Boston in Lincolnshire, I beg to say 

 that these MSS. are taken care of by the family, 

 but none of those to which I before alluded (2""* 

 S. vii, 111.) have been published. The Governor, 

 in his lifetime, printed the first volume of his His- 

 toi-y of the Province of Massachusetts Bay at 

 Boston, New England, in 1764 ; and the second at 

 thesame place in 1767. These begin with the foun- 

 dation of the colony in 1602, or thereabouts, and 

 bring the course of events down to 1749. The 

 Governoi''s ancestors, William and Ann Hutchin- 

 son, from Lincolnshire, in England, arrived out 

 there in 1634 ; but Ann was banished from Bos- 

 ton owing to her intermeddling in religious affairs, 

 in the autumn of 163-, and the whole family pro- 

 ceeded to Khode Island, then in its wild state. 

 Some historians say they were obliged to pass the 

 severity of the winter in a cavern in a rock, having 

 no other shelter. William died in 1643 ; and his 

 wiflow went with her children to Stamford in 

 Connecticut, where the Indians murdered her and 

 all the members of her family and servants, to 

 the amount of sixteen persons, except the eldest 

 daughter, whom they carried off into the forest. 

 This daughter was afterwards redeemed, and mar- 

 ried a Mr. Cole. Such was early colonising! 

 The eldest son, Edward, not being with his mother, 

 alone escaped. He married and perpetuated the 

 family : but curiously enough, he was subse- 

 quently shot by the Indians in a skirmish. On 

 the appointment of General Gage, and the break- 

 ing out of the revolution in 1774, the Governor 

 came to England ; and on his notification of his 

 arrival to the Earl of Dartmouth, both the king 

 and the minister were so anxious to hear the latest 

 American news from him, that he was not allowed 

 to wait until the next day, so as to appear in a 

 court dress, but was at once introduced to his 

 Majesty in his travelling costume just as he was. 

 A long interview took place : and on its termina- 

 tion, the Governor immediately committed the 

 whole to paper verbatim, as far as he was able. It 

 is to Americans that this dialogue would be mostly 

 interesting : but perhaps scarcely more so than 

 the Diary which he kept from this period till his 

 deatli in 1780. He was buried in Croydon church, 

 in the vault of a friend named Apthorpe. The 

 Americans, in their Biographical Dictionaries and 

 other works wherein they mention his name, de- 

 scribe him (with a spirit which we can under- 

 stiind) as having been neglected by the king and 

 the English government during the evening of his 

 life. But his visits with his family to the court of 

 Geor^ge III., and the terms of friendship in which 

 he continued to live with all the first persons of 



the day, as detailed in the Diary, present a very 

 different picture. He declined a Baronetcy which 

 was offered to him as a mark of the king's appre- 

 ciation of his unshaken loyalty ; and his salary aa 

 Governor of 2000/. a year, was continued to him as 

 long as he lived. The third volume of his History 

 he left behind him in MS., almost in a state ready 

 to go to press ; and this was edited and published 

 by my cousin, the Rev. John Hutchinson, in 1828. 

 This brings the narrative down to 1774. But my 

 grandfather, his son, with some other members of 

 his family, did not quit America until 1776, at 

 which time Boston was blockaded and besieged by 

 Washington's army. They at last left rather pre- 

 cipitately, for the war was growing hot : and my 

 grandfather had scarcely got his wife on board the 

 ship when my father was born. The latter died 

 in 1846. In this same ship also came over the 

 Copley family, the present Lord Lyndhurst then 

 being a little boy of four years old. These are 

 events which I have frequently heard my late 

 father mention. 



I paid a visit to America some years ago for the 

 purpose of seeing the country with whicli my an- 

 cestors had been so closely connected : and I one 

 day had a conversation about these MSS. with a 

 gentleman in the library of Harvard University, 

 near Boston. It is my wish to pay another visit 

 to America, for the purpose of collecting many 

 family memorials overlooked on the last occasion. 

 It has long been the intention in my family to 

 bring out a volume compiled from the materials 

 mentioned ; but want of leisure has hitherto pre- 

 vented it. The Governor also left a printed copy 

 of the earlier portion of his History, containing 

 copious notes, corrections, and additions in his 

 own handwriting. This was his private copy, 

 which he evidently intended to make available in 

 the event of bringing out subsequent editions 

 under his own eye. It would be equally available 

 now. I have detailed the several biographical 

 notices above, because they were in some degree 

 connected with the history of the manuscripts 

 concerning which Mb. Thompson made inquiry. 



P. Hutchinson. 



HANBEIiS MODE OF COMPOSING. 



(2"'^S. vi. 409.; vii. 109.) 

 I have been much interested in Db. Gaunt- 

 i-ett's papers on Handel's mode of composing (or 

 rather, in a great measure, of compiling) some of 

 his oratorios, and should be glad to see the matter 

 farther investigated. I see that, in Db. Gaunt- 

 Lett's letter, in your number for last month, 

 Graun is stated by Dr. Crotch to have been one 

 of the authors whose works Handel made use of. 

 I had observed some time ago myself that the 

 theme of the first part of Graun's motett, " Lasset 

 uns aufsehen auf Jesum," is adopted by Handel in 



