the great exodus to Massachusetts. The drawing of Boston School here given is taken just as the precincts are entered from the road. There is a large imposing master's house probably not more than a century old, and at its side is a very noble wrought-iron gateway of greater age; a liberal playground leads up to the school, which was built in the year 1567, and endowed. The master's fees have been varied from time to time, both in the amount and in the manner of collection, and now they are fixed at 200l. with a residence. Under him was an usher, who is now styled the second master, and who is paid by rents rising from property. This building consists of a centre rather nicely broken by a bow window, and two wings. From the style one might have con

Ancient Grammar School, Boston, Lincolnshire, founded A.D. 1567.

sidered it to be later, but from James I. to Charles II. there is in such buildings a great general similarity. At the back of the school, enveloped in trees, is a fine old brick tower, once attached to a mansion-house that has disappeared. This is built of brick like Tattershall Castle, which was at one time the residence of the family who seem to have levied tolls on Boston, though the wapentake jury, as we have seen, sadly declared that they did not know by what warrant. To make a slight digression here, it may be remarked that these tolls have in some instances survived up to the present time; as for example, a very wealthy English nobleman now living erects a barricade at the entrance to an old market and

levies 2d. on every four-footed animal that comes there to be sold; if the custom has been abolished, it is only very recently, for I heard complaints of it the last time I was at the town in question.

The brick tower just referred to is called Hussey Tower, and it stands to the north of St. John's churchyard, which has before been mentioned; an ancient wall that runs along the roadway encloses it. The estate of Lord Hussey was granted to the corporation of Boston, and they sold and took away much of a venerable old mansion called Hussey Hall, but a great pile of gabled buildings was removed in 1780, and various articles both before and since were carted away. An old engraving still remains that shows it to have been a very noble residence, and its removal was little less than a national loss. It might have been so readily converted, had it remained, into some fine institution, or even public offices-like Aston Hall near Birmingham, or Bank Hall near Warrington-but unhappily the powers decreed otherwise, and the materials were taken away and sold. One thing is clear, that it must have required some time and labour to demolish it. The brickwork all round Boston is excellent; the old builders seem to have taken their models generally from the Low Countries on the other side of the German Ocean, though, singularly enough, they used the style of setting which is called English very generally, in preference to 'Dutch bond:' and this is believed to be so much better constructively, that it is in the present day commonly employed. The walls of Tattershall Castle and other old buildings in Lincolnshire are so perfectly even, that any builder would stand high in his craft who was able to put up such work.

The grammar-school itself that has caused this digression has the following inscription over the door: 'Reginæ Elisabethæ nono. Maior et Burgenses Bostoniæ uno et eodem consensu puerorum institutionis gratiâ in piis litteris hanc ædificerunt scholam Gulielmo Ganocke stapulæ mercatore et tunc maiore existenti.' At one time the fairs alluded to in another place were held in the school enclosure, and even so lately as the last century it was called the mart yard. It was enacted, however, that no soldiers should drill in the mart yard, for fear of distracting the attention of the scholars unduly. But the present market square has for generations been also a mart. Old Boston school has been the original 'alma mater' where many a resident of New Boston might trace the names of his forefathers. Boston records are, as a general rule, freely open, and especially to what Old Boston calls its offspring; and it is not very uncommon for farmers who come to market to speak of their namesakes across the deep, and dilate

on the prosperity of their tenth cousins; for it must be remembered that many of the early settlers in Massachusetts before Cotton's time were men either from Boston or the neighbourhood; and it has been remarked that they differed in most particulars from the earlier settlers in Maryland or Virginia; these had often either run through a patrimony, or were younger brothers of noble families with no prospects at home, that contrived to get a large grant of land where tobacco and cotton might be grown. The Massachusetts settlers were men of the middle and upper classes in England, and as such may be said to have differed even from the artisans who ventured across the Atlantic in the Mayflower.' They wished only for substantial men in their number; they were not driven from their fatherland by earthly want or adventure, or in hopes of finding the gold mines that Cabot had falsely said abounded in the New World. They were men who could not conform to the practices of English sacerdotalism, and tore themselves away with many a pang from their fatherland. Our hearts,' Winthrop's followers wrote to some of the brethren they left behind, shall be fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness.' John Cotton,' the vicar of Boston, who resigned his benefice to join the new settlers, was a man of scholarship and high standing, and only left his vicarage because he would not conform to the genuflections and bowings that were ordained to be used in the Church of England; his life was, it is true, without reproach, but he could not conform to what he believed to be superstition, and he appealed in vain to the Bishop of Lincoln and the Earl of Dorset to save him from the impending persecution, urging that for twenty years his sole aim had been to advance righteousness and godliness, and saying, with perfect truth, that his way of life was before all men, and none could challenge it. He indeed might have gone far beyond the patriarch in asking whose ox or whose ass he had taken, for he gave to the extent of his power, and left himself often very bare. All this Lord Dorset knew quite well, and his reply showed that at any rate he was not a hypocrite, for he told him that 'if his crime had been merely drunkenness, or uncleanness, or any such lesser fault,' there would have been no difficulty at all in procuring his pardon, but as for Puritanism or nonconformity, these were too heinous, and he had better fly. But the Stuarts had run thirty years their astonishing career before Cotton left Boston for America,

In an interesting article in the London Standard,' which mentions Boston celebrating its 250th anniversary, it is stated that Cotton was not the first minister who came to New Boston, but a somewhat crusty old divine, the Rev. Mr. Blaxton, had preceded him. He was, however, bought out by Winthrop, and settled in parts unknown with some few of his followers.

and Eliot and Cromwell all in vain had stood between them and their doom. Distance has hardly softened down those dreary days, though we can turn always with delight to the heroic souls that might hardly have been heard of in prosperity, but, like Boston beacon, shone all the brighter on the darkest night.

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The Puritans, it is unnecessary to say, only wished to worship in their own way, or else, if that were forbidden, to leave England for freer skies. But the genius of Laud stopped the latter resource, and filled the English gaols with those who were only there for conscience' sake. Still, to prevent vast numbers leaving the shores for America was beyond even his power, and indeed the dissolution of the Parliament in 1629 was accompanied by some of the most dramatic scenes in English history. The king had decided to rule without a parliament, and the doctrine of passive obedience was preached from almost all episcopal pulpits. Eliot, who was a great landed proprietor, was far from being a fanatic, but he caught the spirit of the times, and wrote from his country mansion, 'Nothing but Heaven shrouds us from despair;' and when he went up to the House of Commons afterwards-the last that sat before it was dissolved for eleven years-he broke out in impassioned eloquence: The Gospel is that truth in which this kingdom hath been happy through a long prosperity. This ground therefore let us lay for a foundation of our building, that that truth, not with words but with actions, we will maintain. There is a ceremony used in the Eastern churches, of standing at the repetition of the creed, to testify their purpose to maintain it, not only with their bodies upright but their swords drawn. Give me leave to call that custom very commendable.' But now all was in confusion: Charles was in the Lords Chamber, and had summoned the Commons into his presence. The framers of the taxes who had appeared to answer their illegal levies before the Commons, pleaded the king's commands for silence, and the Speaker intimated that he had a royal order to adjourn. Through all this confusion, however, Eliot was still on the floor of the House. The doors were locked against the king's messengers; the Speaker, with a sturdy sense of legality, was held down in the chair; and Charles could have heard his own knell in the ringing cheers that greeted Eliot's closing words, none have ever gone about to break parliaments but in the end parliaments have broken them.' It would be about five years after this memorable scene that John Cotton decided to give up his vicarage at Boston, and fly to New England. Cotton belonged to an old and honourable English family. One branch has for many generations been settled at Combermere Abbey in Cheshire, a venerable mansion in a very

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beautiful park, that once belonged to the Cistercian monks, and skirts one of the meres or small lakes which are a feature in Cheshire. This branch of the family is now represented by Lord Combermere. To another branch belonged Charles Cotton, whose name will always be held dear as the associate of good old Isaac Walton. Walton, by the way, curiously appears as an admirer of Sheldon the Archbishop of Canterbury, who in his palace at Lambeth listened with amusement to the mock sermon of a cavalier, who had returned from Boston and Essex, and held up the nasal twang and Puritan idioms to derision; yet Sheldon was by no means the worst of his day, or good old Isaac Walton would

not have spoken so kindly of him as he did, even though it must be admitted that he warmed over him as a fisher, not of men, but of the barbel or umber.' Cotton was born at the town of Derby on December 4, 1585. His father was Rowland Cotton, a lawyer, and it was at first intended that he should follow the profession of his father, in order to enable him to recover some estates that had left the family, as was supposed, unjustly; but fortunately his lot was otherwise cast, and he went, after having passed a creditable career at Derby school, to Trinity College, Cambridge, where at the age of twenty-one he became a Master of Arts. He married Elizabeth Horrocks, the sister of James Horrocks, a celebrated