THE RETROSPECT OF THE YEAR. 185 



the new proprietor soon became engrossed in the develop- 

 ment and improvement of it. 



The first grantee of this tract had been one William 

 Allford (or Alvord) of the numerous and wealthy guild 

 of "Skinners", in London, a man of some consideration in 

 the Colony, he having been selected in mid-summer 1635, 

 with Captain Endecott, on a committee of three to assign 

 convenient places for shops and trades in Salem. He 

 arrived in the summer of 1634 bringing a letter of intro- 

 duction to John Winthrop, jr., which described him as an 

 honest man, well known to M r Cotton. His grant was 

 made Ann 1636 and reads thus in the town records ; "M r 

 Alforel (200 acres vot.) where it is allotted to him qpvided 

 that In Case he dep r t to Leaue it desiring noe aduautag 

 by it." " Where it is allotted " appears in votes of 10 th 

 m 1643, 10 th m 1650 and 1 st m 1653. 



He was driven away before 1638 by persecutions to 

 which his Antinomian heresies and unsound and alarming 

 views on psedo-baptism subjected him, and was thus able 

 to sell this farm which, by the conditions of his grant, 

 had he left it willingly, he would have been forbidden to 

 do. The act of the Court of November, 1637, for "dis- 

 arming of y e opinionists," described him as M r Alfoot and 

 required him, with four other Salem men named, to de- 

 liver up their arms to Lieft. Danfort. If no deed from him 

 is to be found recorded, it should be remembered that the 

 act providing for a registry of deeds was only passed in 

 1640 and also that the peculiar condition of his grant may 

 have made publicity seem undesirable. At any rate the 

 estate, first known by the English settlers as Alford's or 

 Allvord's Hill and then for a while as Long Hill, is in- 

 ventoried thus amongst the " temporall estates," late of 

 Henry Herrick, deceased, March 28, 1671. "The flarme 

 bought of M r Allford, coutaiueing 2 hundred acres 300," 



