Fotmgcs of Sofjn Sossclgn. 7 



was made in 1663. He arrived at Nantasket the 27th of 

 Julv, and foon proceeded to his brother's plantation, where 

 he tells us he ftaid eight years, and got together the matter 

 of the book before us. This was firfl printed in 1672, but 

 occurs alfo with later dates. It was followed, in 1674, by 

 w An Account of Two Voyages to New England ; wherein 

 you have the Setting-out of a fhip, with the Charges; the 



joining in their evangelical faith. Yet there is hardly more than one place in 

 either of his books (Voyages, pp. 1S0-2) where this is offensively brought forward. 

 It is worthy of remark, however, that Josselyn's family, in England, was attached 

 rather to the Puritan side. " His family connections," says Mr. Hunter, in the 

 letter already referred to, " appear to have been adherents to the cause of the 

 Parliament; particularly the Harlakendens, in whose regiment a Jocelyn, named 

 Ralph, was a chaplain." Nor is this all. " In the year 1663," corftinues the 

 learned authority just cited, " there was a slight insurrectionary movement in 

 the North; which was easily put down by the government, and the leaders exe- 

 cuted. In a manuscript list of persons who were either openly engaged, or who 

 were vehemently suspected of being favorers of the design, I find in the latter 

 class the name of Capt. John Jossline." This plot was not discovered till January, 

 1664; and our John Josselyn "departed from London," as he says at page one of 

 this volume, " upon an invitation of my only brother," the 28th of May of the 

 year previous. But, if it be possible that our author was the person intended in 

 the manuscript list as one strongly suspected of being engaged in a design against 

 the Royal Government, the evident uncertainty of this is too great to permit us 

 to discredit his own exposure of his political leanings, — as in the Voyages, p. 

 197, where, speaking of Sir F. Gorges, he says, " And, when he was between 

 three and fourscore years of age, did personally engage in our royal martyr's 

 service, and particularly in the siege of Bristow; and was plundered and im- 

 prisoned several times, by reason whereof he was discountenanced by the pre- 

 tended Commissioners for Forraign Plantations," and so forth, — or in the face 

 of another passage to be quoted further on, in which he acknowledges " the 

 bounty of his royal sovereigness," to question the sincerity — which there is 

 nothing in either of his books to throw doubt upon — of his general adhesion to 

 the Royalist side. "The family in Hertfordshire," says Mr. Hunter, "were non- 

 conformists ; but the spirit of nonconformity seems to have spent itself at the 

 death of Sir Strange Jocelyn, the second baronet, who died in 1734. But we may 

 trace the Puritan influence in the present Earl of Roden, who is a conspicuous 

 member of the religious body in England called the Evangelical." — Ms. ut sup. 



