Your petitioners do therefore humbly pray ye said matter may be taken into your Consideration & that now ye Country is out of debt, you will be pleased in yo' great equity & goodness to give order for ye [ ] of said principal sume of 162.. 16.. 4a, with wt remains unpaid of ye use thereof &c."1

In 1712 the matter was again pressed by Leverett and this time the effort was successful.2

In Brattle's book in the Harvard College Archives, under date of March 29, 1713, there is the following entry:

"Cash rec'd of Mr Taylor Province Treasur" £426 10sh 4a being £162 16sh 4d of it ye principal remaining due of monies borrowed by ye late Colony of ye Massachusetts Bay of y College & £263.. 14/ being for sd sum at 6 pr c. p. anno from the year 1685 to this time less pd Mr Addington for a warrant to ye Treasurer to pay me sd sum pursuant to a resolve of ye Genl Court at their last session in March last 2/."

"Memdm This £162 16/4d ws wt ws due from my Lady Moulson's &c gift to or College lent ye Country ao 1648 & they pd Int. for till 1685."3

Thus the College was in 1713 for the first time placed in possession of the principal of the Lady Mowlson scholarship. The College records as a rule are particularly full as to the disposition of exhibition funds. They are singularly barren with reference to this scholarship. For the twentyeight years immediately previous to this payment, there had been no income from the fund received by the College, and consequently there could have been no distribution to the students. But, even before that period, when there is no reason to doubt that the interest was regularly paid by the Colony, the rule which prevailed as to recording the disposition of the income of the exhibition funds does not

1 See Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. vi., 343.

2 Quincy, i., 206.

3 See also Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1862, p. 343.

seem to have been applied to this. By the terms of this gift the College officials were the persons who were to assign the scholarships. If they exercised the privilege they made no record of it. After the receipt of the principal, this exhibition stood upon the same footing as all others of which the College was the depository of the funds, and it would have been natural that the same careful record should have been kept of the annual distribution of the income, as was customary with the others. Such was not, however, the case, and it is only through a chance record in 1743, where £9 are appropriated out of the income of the "Lady Moulson" fund, and another similar entry in 1746, that we are able positively to trace the separate existence of the fund at these dates.

When the College accounts were opened in double-entry bookkeeping, the outstanding exhibitions were merged in an "Exhibition Account," and from that time the individuality of the several exhibitions collected in that account was lost. Some of the more important scholarships which were thus consigned to oblivion have been rescued by President Eliot and restored to separate life. If an analysis of the exhibition account should fail to reveal the fact that the Lady Mowlson's gift is hidden in its depths, let us still hope that the "good & pious intentions" of the worthy founder of the first scholarship at Harvard may not be disappointed, but that some means may be found through which a "perpetual stipend" to be known as the Lady Mowlson scholarship will pass from "one poore scholar to another" and thus preserve the memory of Lady Mowlson.

1 H. C. Records.

ROGER WILLIAMS, FREEMAN OF MASSACHUSETTS.

BY REUBEN A. GUILD.

KNOWLES in his "Memoir of Roger Williams the Founder of the State of Rhode Island," states that he took the usual oath on his admission as a Freeman of the "Massachusetts Bay," May 18, 1631, referring for authority to Prince's Annals of New England. This author, under date of October 19, 1630, when the "General Court of the Massachusetts Colony met at Boston," gives a list of persons who desired to be made Freemen, including "Roger Williams, a minister, who went 1. to Plymouth. 2. to Salem. 3. to Providence." This however was nearly four months before his arrival in America. The difficulty is explained by adding that the October list comprehended "all those who entered their desires between that time and May 18." Whereupon Prof. Knowles remarks, "that Mr. Williams, with characteristic decision, entered his name on the list very soon after his arrival." This assertion has been repeated by the biographers of Williams, from Knowles down to the present day. The simple fact is, as Dr. Dexter and the lamented Prof. Diman have clearly shown, the Founder of Rhode Island was never admitted as a Freeman of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, although he owned a house and lands in Salem. Who then was the Roger Williams whom Prince records in his "Annals"? The Rev. William Urwick, pastor of the Congregational Church in St. Albans, England, and author of a valuable work recently published, entitled, "Nonconformity in Herts, being Lectures upon the Nonconforming Worthies of St. Albans, and Memorials of Puritanism and Nonconformity in all the Parishes of the

County of Hertford," in a letter to me dated "Belsize Park Gardens, Hampstead, December 1, 1886," states that he finds in the old St. Albans Parish Register, the following entry under the head of Baptisms :-"Roger, son of Mr. Lewis Williams. 3 die, August, 1607." "It now remains," the writer adds, "to hunt up the will of Mr. Lewis Williams. . . . The fact of his being styled Mr. in the Register, shows that he was a man of respectability and mark, because, in the run of names in the Register Mr. does not occur. . . . His name does not appear, nor does that of his son Roger, either among marriages or deaths." If this Roger eventually came to America, as it now seems probable, his name would not be likely to appear in any parish registry.

Mr. Harry Wright, in behalf of the Rev. Canon Elwyn, Master of the Charterhouse, formerly called "Sutton's Hospital," in a letter to my friend W. H. Overall, Librarian of Guildhall, dated "Charterhouse, E. C., 15 April, 1886," thus writes: "The only information contained in our books respecting Roger Williams is, that he was elected a scholar 25th June, 1621, and ordered to be sent to the University, being a good scholar, on the 9th of July, 1624.”

The Rev.

to Roger "All that

This could not apply to the Roger Williams of Rhode Island, although Elton so claims, and Arnold and other writers, including myself, repeat the story. Dr. Dexter, in his interesting monograph "As Williams," singularly enough begins by saying : can be positively proved concerning his early life is that, when a youth, he attracted the attention of Sir Edward Coke, and, on his influence, was elected a scholar of Sutton's Hospital, now the Charterhouse, 25 June, 1621; that he obtained an exhibition there 9 July, 1624; and that he was matriculated a Pensioner of Pembroke College, Cambridge, 7 July, 1625." The first and last of these statements are indeed true. He did attract when a youth the favorable notice of Sir Edward Coke, and he was

eventually matriculated a Pensioner of Pembroke College; but the records of Charterhouse as here given, refer to quite a different person.

66

The Charterhouse, it is well known, comprises a Hospital" for the support of eighty "Pensioners," so called, all upwards of fifty years of age when admitted; a "Chapel"; and a "School," the main feature of which originally was forty Foundation Scholars," none of whom were admitted under the age of ten years nor above the age of fourteen. They were generally the sons of gentlemen with large families and moderate fortunes, to whom an academic education was an object. They were received after examination, and upon the nomination of the governors, of whom there were sixteen. Mr. Sutton, the founder, died on the 12th of December, 1611. Shortly after his death his nephew and heir-at-law, instigated by Sir Francis Bacon, Coke's life-long rival and enemy, instituted proceedings to set aside his uncle's grant, and to divert his immense estates to uses never contemplated by the donor. These attempts were strenuously resisted by the sixteen governors, who were all prelates, noblemen and gentlemen of distinction, at the head of whom was Chief Justice Coke. The result was that Coke was enabled to certify that the founder's incorporation was sufficient, good and effectual in law. The governors held their first meeting on the 30th June, 1613, and proceeded to make various regulations, and to assign apartments within the institution for the different officers. The following year Nicholas Grey, a man "eminent for his learning in the Greek and Latin languages," was appointed "Master of the School," and the work of instruction began. It was about this time, so the tradition reads, "that Sir Edward, one day observing a youth at Church taking notes of the Sermon, and the people crowding, beckoned to him to come to his pew; and seeing how judiciously he minuted down the striking sentiments of the preacher, was so pleased that he entreated the