University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.

The summer which followed these events was a brief and
hurried season. So many things had occurred to divert
the planters from their labor that little time was left—for
any purpose—from the toils of the forest and the field.
Mr. Pynchon was busy with preparations for closing his
trade or turning it entirely into the hands of his son, and
arranging the preliminaries, both on this and the other side
of the Atlantic, for his return to England.

Mr. Moxon employed himself, during the time he could
spare from his poorly performed pastoral duties, in looking
after evidence against Hugh, upon whom, as was seen in
the last chapter, the mantle of witchcraft had fallen. He
was determined to pursue this case to the end, and leave
no means untried to secure conviction. While the people
of the plantation could not help regarding Hugh as a very
harmless individual, their mouths were stopped in his
defence by what they had seen, and he seemed to be in
danger of meeting with a fate as lamentable as that which
had befallen his wife.

As a community, the people of the town were more
united in their feelings than they had ever been, and Mr.
Pynchon had the satisfaction, during the last months which
he spent upon the plantation, of being the centre of devoted
sympathy and attachment, as well to those who had once
been at difference with him, as to his long-time friends.
Everybody saw, through the bland judiciousness of Deacon
Chapin, a decided sympathy with Mr. Pynchon. By what
perverse principle in human nature a heretic shorn of
temporal power becomes heroic to the imagination; how

persecution makes converts where reason fails; why opposition
to a principle often dies when its defender is
stricken down, are questions not readily answered; and yet
it was true that Deacon Chapin no sooner saw Mr. Pynchon
politically powerless—yet falling with dignity back upon
his manhood—than he became one of the best friends he
had. Whether, if his power had been restored, and his
old standing regained, this new affection would have been
constant, Deacon Chapin himself probably did not know.
Few appreciate, or even examine, the influences which
direct or divert the currents of their lives.

As the autumn came on, the time approached for Henry
Smith to depart for the Bay, to attend upon the October
session of the General Court; and as he was, at that time,
the only magistrate in the settlement, Peter Trimble saw
that it would be impossible for him to become the husband
of the widow Tomson before winter, if he did not avail
himself of Mr. Smith's services previous to his departure.
Having, therefore, secured his legal publishment, he called
upon the new magistrate one evening to engage him to
perform, for the first time in his experience, the interesting
and important ceremony. Informing the gentleman that he
would like to see him out of doors, he proposed, in a
manner not wholly free from embarrassment, though
sufficiently charged with a sense of self-importance, the
buisness upon which he had called.

“So you are really going to be married, Peter,” said Mr.
Smith, in his grave but not unpleasant way.

“Well,” responded Peter, “I might as well, I reckon, if
I'm ever going to be, for you see Esther may change her
mind, and I've been to work on her land all summer, and
I've no notion of losing that.”

“Very well,” said the magistrate. “I shall be happy
to marry you at any time you may appoint, before I leave
for the Bay.”

Peter's business was really completed, but he lingered still,
and, finally, as the magistrate turned to walk into his house,
he mustered sufficient resolution to ask him what the fee
would be.

“Oh! anything you choose,” replied Mr. Smith, stepping
into the house, and closing the door behind him.

Peter did not stir from where he stood, for several
minutes. An idea had entered his mind of so novel
and important a character that walking could only have
diverted his attention from its consideration. Having
viewed it in its various aspects, he manifested his satisfaction
with it by shaking his fists violently at the door
beyond which the magistrate had disappeared. Judging
by the expression upon Peter's face, Mr. Smith was not
menaced with any fearful calamity, but simply with some
choice bit of over-reaching which filled the man who had
conceived it with unmixed delight. Taking his way hurriedly
back to the widow's cabin, he entered, and, hanging
his hat upon the accustomed nail, sat down on a low bench,
and, in his old attitude, with his head between his hands
and his hands between his knees, surrendered himself to
those half stifled ebullitions of laughter of which he was
the victim.

“What have you got hold of now?” inquired the admiring
widow, pausing in her work.

“Got hold of my head,” responded Peter, with a readiness
of wit which astonished himself, and threw him into
renewed convulsions.

“Well, that ain't anything very great, I'm sure,” retorted
the widow, entirely unconscious that she had the best of
the joke.

Peter, however, was more appreciative. Struck with the
peculiar force of the retort, he jumped to his feet, and,
grasping the woman cordially by the hand, exclaimed, “By
George! Esther, you are up to pretty much everything,

ain't you? Land ahead! I've got to look out; I ain't
nowhere.”

The new admiration on the part of Peter, and the glow
excited in the heart of the widow by the compliment she
had received, had a very pleasant effect upon the confidential
conversation which followed. In this conversation,
Peter made a revelation of the new idea which had
occurred to him, and, although it did not strike his companion
with such force as he had expected, and as she felt
that it ought to strike a woman of her recently achieved
reputation for acuteness, she acquiesced in its practicability.

The evening for the marriage was at last fixed upon, and
Peter invited a few of his choice friends to meet him at the
magistrate's upon the occasion. The night upon which the
wedding was to take place became generally known, and
when Peter, with his betrothed hanging upon his arm, and
the oldest of her resident children pulling at the opposite
hand, arrived at Mr. Smith's house, he was surprised to find
it literally full. The discovery abashed him; and, from the
merry countenances of those he met, he became distressed
with an apprehension that he was to be made the butt of ridicule.
This was quickly relieved, however, by the polite
attentions he received on every hand, and the efforts made
by every one to place him at his ease, and restore to him
his self-confidence. In fact, Mr. Smith was quite as much
an object of curiosity as the bridegroom and the bride. He
had been rallied for a week on his new dignity, and exhorted
to have the ceremony well committed to memory;
and when the moment came for him to commence the duties
of his office, his face was flushed and his voice tremulous,
while Peter and his simple bride were models of self-possession.

As soon as Peter and Esther had been pronounced husband
and wife, they received the hearty congratulations of
all present, many of whom turned, and jocosely congratulated

the new magistrate on the happy achievement of the
most grateful and graceful honors of his office.

“That is you child, is it, Peter?” remarked one of his
acquaintances, who was shaking his bony hand.

“Perhaps 'tis, one way, now,” replied Peter, “but it
won't be a great while.”

“Have you found a place for it?” inquired his friend, for
the efforts Peter had made to get rid of the children were
notorious.

“Well, I reckon you'll find out before you go home,”
replied the bridegroom, with a wink. Then, turning to
Esther, he remarked, “I guess now would be as good a
time as any, wouldn't it.”

The bride having signified her assent, and bestowed some
attentions upon her child which involved the use of a handkerchief,
Peter stooped, and, taking the little one in his
arms, advanced to Mr. Smith—grinning and snickering all
the way—and said, “I believe, Square, you told me I might
give you anything I was a-mind to for marrying me, and
so I fetched down this young one; and if you'll hold open
your arms I'll put her into them.”

At least half-a-dozen individuals heard every word of the
speech of presentation, and, as Peter suited his action to his
words, and placed the child so far in the magistrate's arms
that he was obliged to grasp it, to keep it from falling, the
laugh that was excited at his expense was irresistible.

As the story spread from mouth to mouth, the wedded
pair found themselves suddenly forgotten in the general
anxiety to get a sight of the magistrate's fee, and congratulate
him upon its beauty and value. The fee itself, though
of a not remarkably timid character, became very much
alarmed at finding itself in the arms of a man whom it had
been taught to regard as one of the great ones of the town;
and, annoyed by the boisterous laughter that was resounding
in every direction among the closely crowding company,

it achieved its liberty by two or three vigorous kicks, and
dodging among the intervening legs, found its way back to
the side of its mother, whom it clasped in a most awkward
manner, and whom it distressed by a yell so obstreperous
that it would have drowned all the tumult of the room, if
it had not tended most decidedly to increase it.

“I wish we'd went out jest as quick as 'twas done,” remarked
Peter to his wife, thoroughly vexed with the child,
and apprehensive that the manœuvre was a failure.

Before the wife could reply, the magistrate approached,
and assured Peter, in a spirit of merriment that was very
unusual with him, that the fee was too large, and being of
a character so similar to an article with which he had the
good fortune to be abundantly supplied, he must positively
decline its reception. That settled the matter, and Peter
mentally resolved upon the spot, that he had made his last
effort to reduce the size of his family. In a state of mingled
joy and disappointment, he soon afterwards announced his
determination to retire, but the company interfered in a
good-natured way, and some plain refreshments were served
in honor of the event. When at last, in compliance with
the request of his wife, who was afraid the children at home
might be fretting, Peter prepared to take leave of the magistrate
and the party, he found his child asleep in the corner;
and taking her in his arms, he departed, followed by the
smiling Mrs. Trimble. Both were glad to be out of the
house, and were heartily rejoiced when they found themselves
quietly seated before a brisk little fire in their own
cabin.

“Well, by George! Esther,” said Peter, after rubbing
his knees and looking into the fire for a while, “it hain't
cost anything, has it?”

Peter's marriage was an event to be merry over in the
plantation, but, while its events were retailed with charming
exaggerations from house to house, the Pynchon family

were engaged in the adjustment of the important affairs
with which were associated their future prospects.

Until within a few days of the proposed departure of
Henry Smith for the Bay, he, as well as the more immediate
family of Mr. Pynchon, had supposed that the latter
gentleman would accompany him. They all knew that the
General Court had enjoined him to be present at the October
session, to complete the satisfaction he had commenced in
the spring, touching his alleged heresies; but he had long
previously determined that the General Court had received
all the satisfaction they would win from him in any form.

The announcement of his determination to his family
filled them with uneasiness. They feared the result of thus
tempting the relentless persecution of those who held the
power to persecute, and made some attempts to dissuade
him from his purpose. He only smiled at their fears, and,
bidding Henry Smith tell the court—if inquiry should be
made for him—that it was inconvenient for him to be present,
and that he could give them no satisfaction were it
otherwise, dismissed his son-in-law and the subject together.

On the arrival of the deputy at the Bay, inquiries were
immediately made of him concerning Mr. Pynchon, and
much surprise expressed that he had seen fit to trample
upon the orders of the government. On the return of
some of the members of the party who accompanied Mr.
Smith, numerous letters were sent to the old man—some
of them from real, but more from pretended friends, urging
him—if he would save his character and save himself—to
show himself to the General Court before the close of the
session. Mr. Pynchon read the letters, laid them aside
without exhibiting them to his family, and as he had no opportunity
to reply, contented himself with the conviction
that he, and not they, judged correctly in regard to what
the General Court would dare to do in his case.

The failure of the venerable heretic to appear was a sub

ject of excessive annoyance to many of the leading members
of the General Court. They were vexed at being
treated with contempt by a man whom they had disabled;
and felt that they had over-reached themselves, in not accepting
Mr. Pynchon's own terms of humiliation, offered in
his hour of distraction and weakness.

After the court had been in session a few days, and Mr.
Smith had become conversant with the state of feeling
which prevailed, he asked for leave of absence for the
remainder of the session. The request was readily granted,
with the secret hope that he would carry to Mr. Pynchon
such a story as would convince him of the advisableness of
his appearance before the General Court as quickly as possible.

They were doomed, however, to disappointment. The
session was lengthened out a day or two, in the vain hope
of hearing of his arrival, but they found at last that all they
could do would be to enjoin him to appear before the next
General Court, and to attach a penalty to a non-compliance
with the requisition.[1]

The action of the General Court was not seen by Mr.

Pynchon until some months after it was taken and recorded.
He read it with many smiles, and with a pleasant compliment
to its excessive kindness and toleration. The manner
in which he treated this new order may be judged from the
fact that it is the very last mention of the case to be found
on the records of the court.

Thus ended, so far as legal measures were concerned, the
persecution which befell one of the noblest men and truest
Christians in the Massachusetts colony. It is impossible to
learn now what controlling cause operated in the withdrawal
of legal measures against him. The General Court, before
which he had been ordered to appear, may have been of a
more liberal character than its predecessor, and may have
dropped the case from lack of sympathy with the end sought.
This however is hardly probable, unless there had been a
popular reaction, of which there is no evidence. The real
cause was probably the fact that he had determined upon
returning to England. They doubtless neither wished him
to return, nor if he should return, to make his case notorious
at home.

The mind sickens on recurring once more, among the
closing scenes of Mr. Pynchon's residence in the colony, to
Mr. Moxon and his hallucinations. It would gladly leave
him, his worn and emaciated wife, and his children—stunted
in body and mind, so that, although approaching womanhood,
they were but children still—all to the fate which alone
could be their legitimate inheritance; but there is one individual
who, through his personal innocence and dependence,
and the associations of his later life, has enlisted the sympathies
of the reader, and is still beneath the ban of the minister's
fatal superstition. Hugh Parsons—his wife in her
grave—a woman whom he felt more and more to have
been originally intended by Heaven to be his good angel—
his reputation tarnished by his association with her name
and crime itself, the subject of the most terrible suspicions

possible at the time to be entertained, was a blighted man.
Never strong, either in heart or hand, his great calamities
crushed him. He felt like one benumbed. He walked like
one afraid. He looked like one conscious of having been
forsaken alike by God and man.

Throughout the year which succeeded the death of his
wife, the evidence against him went on accumulating, aided
in the process by the increasing superstitiousness of the
villagers. By some strange fatality, every movement that
he made seemed to involve him in new difficulties. Suspicious
circumstances seemed to walk with him like companious
wherever he went, to stand at his side whenever
he paused, to group themselves about him whenever he
talked, re-echoing all his utterances.

At length, complaint was entered against him as a wizard,
and he was arrested and taken to the Bay, to be tried for
his life. At this time, the state of feeling in the plantation
had arrived at such a pitch that many believed that Hugh
had been in the practice of his hellish abominatious for
months before the death of his wife, and that the minister's
daughters were not the only individuals who had been their
subjects. He was brought before the grand jury, and indicted,
and then before a trial jury, which, by an unanimous
verdict, found him guilty. The verdict came before
the magistrates for review, who, on examination of the evidence
upon which it was based, set it aside. The case then
came legally before the General Court, which sustained the
view taken by the magistrates, and acquitted him.[2]

The ruin of Hugh could not have been more complete
had the verdict of the jury been sustained, and the sentence
of death executed upon him. He returned to the
plantation broken down in health and reputation—one
more victim to that strangest and most terrible of the delusions
with which God has permitted man to deceive himself.
But the issue of the case was followed by a healthy
and much needed reaction in the sentiment of the town.
The veil was lifted from the eyes of those who had been
misled, and a thousand things which, in their previous mental
condition, had appeared mysterious, were explained, until,
heartily ashamed of themselves, and indignant that their
leader in spiritual and religious affairs should have drawn
them into such guilt of injustice and cruelty, they became
open in their complaints against him.

Mr. Moxon was discouraged. He was thoroughly grieved,
not only in consequence of the fact that Hugh had escaped
from the punishment which he fully believed was his
due, but because the people had turned against himself, the
only individual, besides his family, whom he believed to
have been injuriously and unjustly dealt with. He felt that
he could no longer fight with Satan, and that he must forsake
the field and flee.

In looking over his future, and thinking of the departure
of Mr. Pynchon and Henry Smith—men who, from the first,
had been his friends—men who had pitied his calamities
and exercised charity for his frailties—he felt that none
would be left behind who would trust him as they had done.

—Records
of Massachusetts, Vol. IV. part 1, page 96.”

There seemed to be no way left open for him but to return
to England, with his old friend and patron, and fill out
the measure of his life among the scenes of his youth and
early manhood. His proposition to this effect was received
with no surprise by Mr. Pynchon, who had for some time
seen that it would be his only practicable course of procedure;
while it was received by the town with a degree of
relief and satisfaction which showed how their discontent
with him and his ministrations had become confirmed.

The details of preparation for the return to England of
these three men—Mr. Pynchon, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Moxon
—do not require a recital. It was upon a midsummer morning
of the year 1652—only two or three months after the
issue of Hugh's trial for witchcraft—that all the members of
the plantation were assembled at the house of Mr. Pynchon,
the majority of them to bid him and his companions a
final farewell, and the remainder to bear them company on
their journey to the Bay. It was the most touching scene
that the people had ever witnessed. Mr. Pynchon addressed
them from the doorway of his house with kind words of
counsel, with the warmest terms of paternal endearment,
and with such allusions to the future as the occasion would
very naturally suggest.

At the close of his brief and simple address all pressed
forward to give his hand the parting grasp. Some of the
simple-hearted villagers wept aloud. Besides the members
of the plantation, a large number of Indians were present
to bid adieu to their friend. They pressed around or stood
apart in silence, struck with a tender solemnity which impressed
Mr. Pynchon quite as deeply as the more boisterous
demonstrations of his neighbors. He bade them farewell
in some kind words to their chief, distributed to them a
multitude of little gifts which he had prepared for them,
and conjured them to live in peace, as they had thus far
done, with their white brothers.

The entire family of Mr. Pynchon bore him company on
his journey to the Bay, but they did not form one half of
the party. Nearly all the horses of the plantation were put
in requisition for the transportation of packs and passengers,
and the cavalcade was the most imposing which had ever
passed over the Bay Path. It was a beautiful sight, on
that bright summer morning, as the long line started on its
passage eastward; and yet it was as solemn as a funeral
procession. There were the magistrate and his aged companion,
Mr. Moxon and his wife and daughters, Henry
Smith and his family, Holyoke and Mary, and drivers and
friends in a long array.

Arriving at the summit of the hill upon the east—upon
the very spot where, sixteen years before, Mr. Pynchon and
his family had paused to look down into the valley which
was to be their future home—upon the very spot where
Mary had met her lover, at the side of her slaughtered pet
—the very spot where they stood when they crowned the
northern mountain tops with the names they bear to-day—
all paused by a common impulse, and turned the heads of
their horses westward.

This was the most affecting moment of all. A throng
of the tenderest and strongest associations crowded upon
every mind, warm tears sprang into nearly every eye, and
all looked and lingered for whole minutes, without a
thought of the journey which lay before them. It was a
moment for prayer. Even the horses seemed to lose all
impatience, and to nibble at the tender foliage within their
reach delicately and without disturbance. Mr. Moxon's
head was bowed upon his breast, in deep bitterness of
spirit, and he did not seem to catch the sentiment which
pervaded the others; but Mr. Pynchon, with uncovered
head, his silver hair shining in the sunlight, dropped his
bridle rein, and stretching both hands towards the valley,
gave utterance to his emotions and his aspirations in the

words of prayer and thanksgiving. He prayed for the
community he was leaving—for their safety and prosperity,
for the natives of the valley, in whom he had always entertained
a deep interest, and for all who might be directly or
indirectly affected by the change which was then in progress
in the affairs of the settlement. He committed himself
and his companions to God, and thanked his Father in
Heaven for the discipline—severe as it had been—through
which they had been led. As the “Amen” trembled upon
his lips, every horse seemed to turn of his own will into the
path, and silently resume the journey; while tearful eyes
caught their last look of a valley which through life they
recalled as the scene of a long and eventful dream.

Of the journey to the Bay—the multiplied interviews
with friends at Boston and in the other settlements, the
preparations for the voyage, the return of alienated friends
of Mr. Pynchon to their old fidelity; of the tender partings
—partings which, in some instances, were like the sunderings
of the heart's quickest fibres, the embarkation, the
dropping down the Bay with the tide, the spreading of
the vessel's great white wings, and their vanishment in
the dusky distance, the return of the silent and sorrowful
planters homeward, and their arrival among their friends—
the particulars do not call for a rehearsal. They brought
to a close, as the devout planters fully believed, a providential
dispensation, for the purpose of making way for
another, which should be longer and more prosperous; and
as the man upon whom they had so long relied disappeared,
they felt themselves clothed with new strength and a new
mission.

On the vessel, the minister and his family, with several
others of the party, were confined to their cabins during the
entire voyage. Mr. Pynchon was less affected than the
others, and made his way upon deck as early as possible,
and there, day after day, spent his time in conversation

with an old man, dressed in a sailor's costume, with whom
he seemed to be on the most confidential terms.

There, together on one bark fleeing homeward, were
three outlaws, each one of whom, from widely varying
causes, had found himself dissonant with the spirit of the
colony to such an extent that he could not live in it. Independence
of religious opinion, a becoming restiveness under
laws unnecessarily rigid, and a practical belief in gross superstition,
were all really, and most decidedly, at war with
the spirit of the colony at that time. They could not live
in it, and so returned to the place from whence they came
out.

In his conversations with Mr. Pynchon upon the vessel,
Woodcock (for the reader will have recognised him in his
sailor's dress) settled the plans for his future life. He had
promised his friend that he would neither make himself
known to Mr. Moxon, nor take any measures to revenge
the injuries he had received upon the deluded minister;
and that he would remain near Mr. Pynchon, and in his
employment, while they should be spared alive.

Mr. Moxon, on his arrival in England, made an endeavor
to throw off the cloud which rested upon him, but he found
it all in vain. He was mentally a wreck, and both he and
his family were soon lost sight of, to all his old acquaintances.
Previous to his disappearance, he had been silenced
as a preacher, and doubtless spent the remainder of his life
in inferior, if not menial employments.[3]

Mr. Pynchon and his family, which embraced that of
Henry Smith, settled down at Wraisbury, in Buckinghamshire,

a small place on the Thames, where he spent the remainder
of his days in the undisturbed enjoyment of those
pursuits which had become so pleasant to him. It was
there, within sight of the river which washed the shore of
his garden, that he dreamed of the past, and recalled the
beautiful Connecticut, with all its interesting associations.
It was there that he spent many a day in conversation with
Woodcock, upon the trials of the past, the duties of the
present, and the interests of the future. It was there that
he had the deep satisfaction of seeing the old man—deemed
reprobate by his former acquaintances—becoming meek,
and tractable, and penitent. It was there that he endeavored,
in a book still extant in the Harvard College Library,
“to clear several scriptures of the greatest note in these
controversies, from Mr. Norton's corrupt exposition,” and
there that he regained full command of his own reason,
and reiterated the opinions which, under a terrible pressure,
he had mistakenly recalled. It was there, in the last years
of his life, that he wrote other theological books and tracts,
and sent out around him a healthy and vigorous religious
influence. It was there that the infirmities of age crept
silently upon him; there that at last, crowned with years
and venerated by all who knew him, he sank to rest in the
blessed hope of joyful resurrection; and it is there that,
after the lapse of nearly two centuries, still sleeps his most
honorable dust.

Mr. Pynchon's wife did not long survive him. Simple-hearted,
honest in her piety, venerating her husband while
he lived, and cherishing his memory as her most precious
treasure after he was gone, her last days were peaceful and
serene.

Woodcock survived his old friend for many years, and,
in his altered spirit, became a favorite with all who knew
him. Many a wise and learned man called at his cottage,
to listen to the recital of his experiences in America, the

quaint views of society and the leading questions of the
time which he put forth, and especially to hear him talk
upon religion. This subject became the leading one of his
mind during the last years of his life, and it was one upon
which he brought his strong and unwarped common sense
to bear with remarkable power. He was contented and
happy. He believed that God had done all things well,
and hoped and expected to meet the wife and daughter of
his youth in Heaven. He died a very old man, falling
asleep in confidence and trust; and those who bore him to
his burial-place, and covered the earth upon him, interred
a heart which could count as many pulses true to manliness
as any that had throbbed in that century.

Henry Smith and his family lived through the remainder
of their days and died in England. They were a sober,
godly family of the Puritan stamp, and maintained a standing
of high respectability. But he and his became dust in
their appointed time, and all those who parted on the shore
of the ocean years before, have since met on the bank of a
river that has crossed the path heavenward of all the generations
of men.