BOSTON TO ALBANY. 93 



the remainder of the evening was spent with my wife 

 and daughter and a few friends who had called for a 

 social talk and to tell me something of the early 

 history of Springfield and vicinity. 



As the lecture appointment for Pittsfield was set for 

 the fifteenth I readily discovered by a simple calcula- 

 tion that I could easily spend another day with Hattie 

 and Alice and still reach Pittsfield early in the after- 

 noon of the fifteenth. The leisure thus found was 

 devoted to strolls in and around Springfield and a 

 careful study of the city and its environs. 



When Kincr Charles the First had dissolved his third 

 parliament, thus putting his head on the bleeding heart 

 of puritan ism, there lived in Springfield, England, a 

 warden of the established church. " He was thirty- 

 nine years of age, of gentle birth, acute, restive, and 

 singularly self-assertive. He had seen some of the 

 stoutest men of the realm break into tears when the 

 King had cut off free speech in the Commons; he had 

 seen ritualism, like an iron collar, clasped upon the 

 neck of the church, while a young jewelled courtier, 

 the Duke of Buckingham, dangled the reputation of 

 sober England at his waistcoat. A colonial enter- 

 prise, pushed by some Lincolnshire gentlemen, had 

 been noised abroad, and the warden joined his for- 

 tunes with them, and thus became one of the original 

 incorporators mentioned in the Royal Charter of the 

 Massachusetts Bay Company in America. This was 

 William Pinchon.^' After reachino^ this country he 

 became treasurer of the colony, and a member of the 

 general court. He formed plans for a coast trade, and 

 for a trade with the Indians. 



Such was the man of mark, who in 1636, with a 



