ALGONQUIAN LANGUAGES. 



175 



Eliot (J.)— Continued. 



Believer all most translated, thougli not fitted 

 and finished for the Presse, yet by advertizm* 

 fro the hon'^able Corporation, I must lay that 

 by and fall upon the Practise of Piety, w^'' I 

 had intended to be the last." Twenty-four 

 years later, in a letter to the Hon. Robert Boyle, 

 dated July 7th, 1688, he mentions "Mr. John 

 Cotton, who helped me much in the second 

 edition of the bible," and then adds: "And 

 also I must commit to him the care and labour 

 of the revisal of two other small treatises, viz. 

 Mr. Shepheard's Sincere Convert and Sound 

 Believer, which I translated into the Indian 

 language mauy years since ; and now I hope, 

 that the honourable corporation will be at the 

 charge to print them, by your honour's favour 

 and countenance. But I cannot commit them 

 to the press without a careful revisal, which 

 none but Mr. Cotton is able to help me to per- 

 form." 



The Sincere Convert was printed in the fol- 

 lowing year, with the Indian title given above. 

 It was revised for the press, however, not by 

 Mr. Cotton, but by the Eev. Grindall Rawson, 

 minister of the church in Mendon, "who had 

 learned to preach to the Indians in their own 

 language, and was for many years active iu 

 mission work among them." Mr. Eliot'slndian 

 translation of the Sound Believer was probably 

 never printed. The first edition of the Sincere 

 Convert in English is dated London, 1641 ; the 

 first edition of the Sound Believer, London, 1645. 



Copies seen : American Antiquarian Society, 

 Brown, Lenox, Trumbull, Yale. 



A copy of this book, lacking the title and 

 bound with Rawson's Nashauanittue Menin- 

 nunk of 1691, brought $12 at the sale of the Rev. 

 "William Jenks's library in 1867. One of Mr. 

 Brinley's copies, bound in blue levant morocco 

 l)y Bedford, sold in 1879 (no. 803) for $40, Mr. 

 Bartlett buying it for the Brown collection; 

 another, bound with Rawson's Nashauanittue 

 Meninnunk of 1691, in blue morocco by Bedford, 

 <no. 804), was purchased for Yale College libra- 

 ry for $100 ; and a third copy, with the title and 

 next leaf in fac-simile, and bound in olive mo- 

 rocco by Bedford (no. 805), was bought by Dr. 

 Trumbull for $21. 



John Eliot was born in England, probably in 

 the beginning of August, 1604, and died at Rox- 

 bnry in Massachusetts, in May , 1690. The place 

 of his oirth is not known with certainty. Sev- 

 eral of his biographers locate it at Nasiug in the 

 county of Essex ; but later researches seem to 

 fix it at Widford in Hertfordshire, where the 

 record is found of his baptism on the 5th of 

 August, 1604. Bennett Eliot, his father, held 

 lands in both of the above named counties, irom 

 the profits of which the sum of 8^. yearly was set 

 apart by will, November 5th, 1621, for the main- 

 tenance of John at college. On the 20th of March, 

 1619, John Eliot was entered as a pensioner at 

 Jesus College in Cambridge, where he graduated 

 in 1622 with the degree of bachelor of arts. 

 About the year 1630, he was employed as an assist- 



Eliot (J.) —Continued. 



antinaschoolat Little Baddow,near Chelmsford, 

 in Essex, which was kept by the Rev. Thomas 

 Hooker, who had been silenced for nonconform- 

 ity, and who afterwards became the first min- 

 ister of the church in Cambridge (then called 

 Newtown) , New England. "While living in Mr. 

 Hooker's family, a change took place in Mr. 

 Eliot's belief, which led him to join the dissent- 

 ers, although he had probably taken orders in 

 the Church of England. Having resolved to 

 devote himself to the ministry, he decided to 

 leave his native land in order to obtain the lib- 

 erty of preaching without restraint, and to 

 escape the persecution which followed noncon- 

 formists in England. He accordingly sailed for 

 America, and early in November, 1631, landed 

 at Boston. For several months he preached for 

 the church in that town, during the temporary 

 absence of its minister, the Rev. John Wilson. 

 On the 4th of September, 1632, he was married ; 

 and on the 5th of November of the same year 

 he was ordained as teacher of the church in 

 Roxbury, which office he held more than fifty- 

 seven years. Twice during this long period, 

 from 1641 to 1650, and from 1674 to 1688, he was 

 without clerical assistance in his ministerial 

 work. His first colleague was the Rev. Thomas 

 Welde, from 1633 to 1641. In 1634, Mr. Eliot 

 incurred the diapleasure of the colonial magis- 

 trates by a sermon in which he criticised their 

 conduct in making a treaty with the Pequot 

 Indians without first obtaining the consent of 

 the people. For these injudicious animadver- 

 sions he was required to make a public apologj'-. 

 Three years later he took part in the examina- 

 tion and trial of Mrs. Hutchinson, which resulted 

 in the excommunication and banishment of that 

 religious enthusiast from the colony. In 1639, 

 he was selected, with Rev. Thomas "Welde and 

 Rev. Richard Mather, to prepare anew version 

 of the psalms of David in English metre. This 

 joint undertaking was completed and printed 

 in the following year as The Whole Booke of 

 Psalmes. more generally known as the Bay 

 Psalm Book. It was the first book printed in 

 the English American colonies. 



At the time of Mr. Eliot's arrival in Massa- 

 chusetts there were five principal nations of 

 Indians, as enumerated by Mr. Gookin, dwell- 

 ing within the confines of New England, all of 

 whom used " the same sort of speech and lan- 

 guage," but with differences of dialect. The 

 first of these nations, the Pequots or Pequods. 

 "were a people seated in the most southerly 

 bounds of New England," within the limits of 

 thepreseut State of Connecticut. " Their chief 

 sachem held dominion over divers petty saga- 

 mores: as over part of Long Island, over the 

 Mohegans, and over the sagamores of Quina- 

 peake, yea over all the people that dwelt upon 

 Connecticut river, and over some of the most 

 southerly inhabitants of the Nipmuck country, 

 about Quinabaag, The principal sachem lived 

 at, or about, Pequot, now called New London." 

 This nation was conquered and broken up by 



