HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 



In Massachusetts, John Leverett was Governor, and 

 Edward Rawson, Secretary. Here Winthrop and Shep- 

 ard had been dead twenty-five years; John Cotton, twen- 

 ty-two ; Dudley, twenty-one; Saltonstall, sixteen; John 

 Norton, eleven; Richard Mather, five; John Allin, three; 

 and John Davenport and Charles Chauncy, two; and here 

 Thomas Cobbett still lived at the age of sixty-six, John 

 Eliot at seventy, and Simon Bradstreet at seventy-seven. 



William Coddington was Governor, and John Sanford 

 Recorder, of the " Providence Plantations," where Roger 

 Williams was still hale and hearty (and ready to earn a 

 new title as "Captain" in this war) at the age of seventy- 

 five; and William Blaxton was very soon to be carried 

 from his dreams among his folios to his rest on the banks 

 of that beautiful river, which bears his name as it ripples 

 by his grave. 



John Winthrop (son of Gov. John of Massachusetts) was 

 Governor of the now united Colonies of Connecticut and 

 New Haven ; where Samuel Eaton had been dead thirty-two 

 years; Thomas Hooker, twenty-seven; Theophilus Eaton, 

 seventeen; Samuel Stone, eleven; and John Warham, four. 



The settlements in what is now Maine had at this time 

 but a single Congregational Church. In what is now New 

 Hampshire, there were three." :: " In what is now Vermont, 



* One had been gathered at Exeter and no record exists of the formation 

 in 163S, but it became extiniSt in 1641 ; of another until 1698. 



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