The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864. Various
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Groton, at the dissolution of the monasteries, was granted to Adam Winthrop in 1544. Retaining his mercantile relations in the great city, and probably residing there at intervals, he seated himself in landed dignity at his manor, and there he died in 1562. His memorialist now holds in his possession the original bronze plate which was put upon his tomb three hundred years ago, and which was probably removed to give place to the new inscription connected with the repairs already referred to. This ancient sepulchral brass bears in quaint old English characters the following inscription:—"Here lyeth Mr. Adam Wynthrop, Lorde & Patron of Groton, whiche departed owt of this Worlde the IXth day of November, in the yere of owre Lorde God MCCCCCLXII." His widow, who had been his second wife, married William Mildmay; and his daughter Alice married Mr. Mildmay's son Thomas, who, being afterwards knighted, secured to the cloth-worker's daughter the title of "Lady Mildmay." In the cabinet of the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, the visitor, on the asking, may be gratified with the sight and touch of a curious old relic which will bring him almost into contact with a most agreeable family-circle of the olden time. It is a serviceable posset-pot, with a silver tip and lid, both of which are gilded, the cover, still playing faithfully on its hinge, being chased with the device of Adam and Eve in the garden partaking of the forbidden fruit. An accompanying record reads as follows:—"At ye Feast of St. Michael, Ano. 1607, my Sister, ye Lady Mildmay, did give me a Stone Pot, tipped & covered wth. a Silver Lydd." How many comforting concoctions and compounds, alternating with herb-drinks and medicated potions, may have been quaffed or swallowed with wry face from that precious old cup, who can now tell? Probably it ministered its more inviting contents to the elders of the successive generations in the family, while it was known by the younger members in their turn in connection with certain penalties for overeating and chills got from hard play. While having the relic in hand, the other day, the prompting was irresistible to bring it close to the appropriate organ, to ascertain, if possible, what had been the predominant character of its contents. But, faithful as the grave, it would reveal no secrets; having parted with all transient and artificial odors, it has resumed, as is most fitting, the smell of its parent earth.
The writer of that record accompanying the "Stone-Pot" with its "Silver Lydd" was Adam Winthrop, father of our Governor, and son of the last-mentioned Lord of Groton. This third Adam Winthrop—the sixth child of his father's second wife, and the eleventh of his thirteen children—was born in London, "in the street which is called Gracious," (Grace-Church,) August 10, 1548. Losing his father at the age of fourteen, he was early bred as a lawyer in London, but soon engaged in agricultural interests at Groton, to the lordship of which he acceded by a license of alienation from an elder brother. There are sundry authentic relics and tokens of this good man which reveal to us those traits of his character, and those ways and influences of his domestic life, under the high-toned, yet most genial training of which his son was educated to the great enterprise Providence intended for him. There are even poetical pieces extant which prove that Adam sought intercourse with the Muses by making advances on his own part, though we must confess that he does not appear to have been fairly met half-way by that capricious and fastidious sisterhood. Many of his almanacs and diaries, with entries dating from 1595, and from which the author makes liberal and interesting transcripts in an Appendix, have been happily preserved, and have a grateful use to us. They help us to reconstruct an old home, a pleasant one, in or near which three generations of a good stock lived together after the highest pattern of an orderly, exemplary, prospered, and pious household. We infer from many significant trifles, that, while the old English comfort-loving, generous, and hospitable style prevailed there, the severer spirit of Puritanism had not attained ascendancy. Intercourse with the metropolis, though embarrassed with conditions requiring some buffeting and hardship, was compensated by the zest of adventure, and it was frequent enough to quicken the minds and to add to the bodily comforts and refinements of the family. Adam Winthrop must have been a fine specimen of the old English gentleman, with all of native polish which courtly experiences might or might not have given him, and with a simple, high-toned, upright, and neighborly spirit, which made him an apt and a faithful administrator of a great variety of trusts. His old Bible, now in the possession of Mr. George Livermore of Cambridge, represented the divine presence and law in his household, for all its members, parents and children, masters and servants. He entertained hospitably his full share of "the godly preachers," who were the wandering luminaries, and, in some respects, the angelic visitants of those days. He was evidently a very patient listener to sermons, though we have not the proof in any surviving notebooks of his that one of his excellent son John's furnishes us, that he took pains to transcribe the heads, the savory passages, and the textual attestations of the elaborate, but utterly juiceless sermons of the time. The entries in his almanacs afford a curious variety, in which interesting events of public importance alternate with homely details touching the affairs of his neighborhood and the incidents in the domestic life of his relatives and acquaintance. One matter, as we shall soon see, on which a fact in the life, of Governor Winthrop depends, finds an unexpected disclosure from Adam's pen. Here are a few excerpts from these entries:—"1597. The VIth of July I received a privie seale to lend the Q. matie [Elizabeth] £XX. for a yere."—"1602. Sept. the 27th day in ye mornying the Bell did goe for mother [a conventional epithet] Tiffeyn, but she recouered." This decides a matter which has sometimes been disputed,—that, while with us, in our old times, "the passing bell" indicated the progress of a funeral train, anciently in England it signified that a soul was believed to be passing from a body supposed to be in extremis. And a doleful sound it must have been to those of whom it made a false report, as of "mother Tiffeyn."—"Decem. ye XXI day my brother Alibaster came to my house & toulde me yt he made certayne inglishe verses in his sleepe, wh. he recited unto me, & I lent him XLs."—"1603 April ye 28th day was the funeralles kept at Westminster for our late Queene Elizabethe."—"1603. On Munday ye seconde of Maye, one Keitley, a blackesmythe, dwellinge in Lynton in Cambridgeshire, had a poore man to his father whom he kepte. A gentleman of ye same Towne sent a horse to shoe, the father held up the horses legge whilest his soonne did shoe him. The horse struggled & stroke the father on ye belly with his foote & overthrewe him. The soonne laughed thereat & woulde not helpe his father uppe, for the which some that were present reproved him greatlye. The soonne went forwarde in shoinge of ye horse, & when he had donne he went uppon his backe, mynding to goe home with him. The horse presently did throughe him of his backe against a poste & clave his hed in sonder. Mistress Mannocke did knowe ye man, for his mother was her nurse. Grave judicium Dei in irrisorem patris sui." These little scraps of Latin, sometimes running into a distich, are frequent signs of a certain classical proclivity of the writer. Any one who should infer, from the good man's arbitrary mode of spelling many words, that he was an illiterate person, would be grievously mistaken, in his ignorance of the universal characteristic and license of that age in that matter. The Queen herself was by no means so good a "speller," by our standard, as was Adam Winthrop. The extraordinary way in which letters were then left out of words where they were needed, and most lavishly multiplied where no possible use could be made of them, is a phenomenon never accounted for.
Adam Winthrop was for several years auditor of the accounts of Trinity and St. John's Colleges, Cambridge, and records his visits to the University in the discharge of his duties. We have specimens of a pleasant correspondence between him and his sister, Lady Mildmay, also with his wife, marked by a sweet and gentle tone, the utterance of a kindly spirit,—fragrant records of hearts once so warm with love.
It must have been with supreme delight that Adam entered in his diary, that on January 12, 1587, [January 22, 1588, N.S.,] was born his only son, John, one of five children by his second wife. John came into the world between the years that marked, respectively, the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the visit of the Spanish Armada. We can well conceive under what gracious and godly influences he received his early nurture. His mother died only one year before he, at the age of forty-two, embarked for America, his father having not long preceded her. Evidence abundant was in our possession that John Winthrop had received what even now would be called a good education, and what in his own time was a comparatively rare one. It had generally been taken for granted, however, that he had never been a member of either of the Universities. His present biographer tells us that long before undertaking his present grateful task