ments fitted him pre-eminently for this work, and the code which he prepared is generally recognized to be identical with The Body of Liberties, which was eventually ratified and adopted as the written law of the Colony. It has been commended by men of high judicial attainments as a work of fine legal quality. The General Court granted Mr. Ward six hundred acres of land at Pentucket, now Haverhill, in 1641, as compensation for this service.1

In 1643, fears were prevalent of entanglement with French colonial affairs at St. John on account of Gov. Winthrop's favorable action upon the request of La Tour to hire ships in the Colony. A Remonstrance was drawn up signed by Richard Saltonstall, Simon Bradstreet, Samuel Symonds, Nathaniel Ward, Ezekiel Rogers, Nathaniel Rogers, and John Norton. The first three were magistrates. Ezekiel Rogers was minister at Rowley. This document may have contributed to the defeat of Governor Winthrop at the following election. It is natural to conclude that the conferences incidental to the formulating of this Remonstrance may have been held in Mr. Ward's house, as the oldest of the group and most delicate in health.

In the year 16453 he was already at work on The Simple Cobler, which was completed in the following year and sent to London for publication. He bade farewell to Ipswich in the winter of 1646/7, and sailed for England, where he spent his declining years, and died in 1653.

During these twelve years he had tasted the bitterness of poverty. The pathos of that letter written on December 24 of 1634 or 1635 to Governor Winthrop will never be forgotten. "I heare Mr. Coddington hath the sale and disposall of much provision come in this shipp. I intreate you to do so much as to speake to him in my name to reserue some meale & malt & what victuals els he thinks meete till our Riuer be open our Church will pay him duely for it I am very destitute I have not above 6 bushells corne left & other things answerable.''

With grim humor, he remarks of Time in The Simple

1 See an estimate of this code in "Ipswich 'in the Massachusetts Bay Colony," page 47.

Printed in full in the Hutchinson Papers, with Gov. Winthrop's

answer.

3 Simple Cobler, p. 18: "Materia millessima sexcentesima quadragesima quinta."

Cobler (p. 53), it is an empty thing, as empty as a NewEnglish purse, and emptier it cannot bee;" and there is a touch of bitterness in his observations on the financial support of ministers, "nor can an Elder be given to hospitality, when he knowes not what will be given him to defray it: it is pity men of gifts should live upon mens gifts" (p. 41). "The seeds of the Bay-sickness," caused much physical pain and weakness, so that he realized his unfitness for a removal to the new plantation at Pentucket, though the project was often deliberated by the family group, and his son John removed thither, and became the minister of the new settlement.

No house ever built in our town has such associations as that in which he dwelt and wrought out The Body of Liberties and struck off The Simple Cobler, while in the humor, brooding often upon his poverty and weakness. It was standing some years after his departure. Cotton Mather, in his "Parentator, Memoirs of Remarkables in the Life and Death of his father, Increase Mather," published in 1724, remarked, quoting perhaps his father's words:

"An Hundred witty Speeches of our celebrated Ward who called himself The Simple Cobler of Agawam [and over whose Mantle-piece in his House, by the way, I have seen those three Words Engraved, SOBRIE JUSTE PIE and a Fourth added which was LÆTE] have been reported. But he had one Godly Speech. I have only Two Comforts to Live upon: The one is, in The Perfections of CHRIST: The other is in The Imperfections of all CHRISTIANS."

No deed of conveyance was recorded. It was sold undoubtedly to Jonathan Wade and Firmin's house became the property of Deacon William Goodhue.1

The Simple Cobler was published in January, 1646/7, and attained great popularity. Four editions were printed within a few months. A reprint of the fourth London edition was published in Boston in 1713, and David Pulsifer, of the Ipswich family of that name, made a reprint of this edition in 1843. This reprint is from a copy of the fourth

1 See a full account of land transfers in "Ipswich in the Massachu setts Bay Colony," p. 470. Mr. John W. Nourse has discovered, in the Commoners' Record, the entry

"Mr. Jonathan &

Mr. Thomas Wade

comonages, one by Mr. Nath' Wards

father in 1646."

claim equal

rights in ye several

Entry 1641 deed to yr Grand

London edition, presented to the Ipswich Historical Society by the late Daniel Fuller Appleton, Esq. The title page and the two following pages have been reproduced. The page divisions and the general appearance of the book have been preserved as far as possible throughout the work. The original punctuation, capital letters, and spelling have been adhered to faithfully.

The title page is ingeniously worded. The author's name appears thinly disguised under the pseudonym, Theodore de la Guard, Theodore being the exact Greek equivalent of the Hebrew, Nathaniel, and de la Guard an easy French rendering of Ward. The mingling of classical quotations with acute and amusing English paraphrases is an admirable prelude to the method of the whole essay. The fiction of the 'Cobler' is maintained in the prefatory note, To the Reader, and in the title repeated on page 1, but it is abandoned instantly with the discussion of his theme, reappearing only in his setting on of "the best peece of Soule-leather I have" on page 32, in the snatch of song he puts in the mouth of the 'Cobler' on pages 45 and 46, the “humble heel-piece'' on pages 79 and 80, and the numerous finishing touches of the Errata, with which the book ends.

A few vigorous sentences portray the confused and critical condition of public affairs. "Sathan is now in his passions, he feeles his passion approaching: hee loves to fish in royled waters." "The finer Religion grows, the finer hee spins his Cobwebs'' (p. 2).

The healing of "these comfortlesse exulcerations," is a difficult task, but he endeavors to make some contribution to this end. Resenting the charge that the New England colonists are "a Colluvies of wild Opinionists, swarmed into a remote wildernes to find elbow-roome for our phanatick Doctrines and practises:" he proclaims in the name of the Colony "that all Familists, Antinomians, Anabaptists and other Enthusiasts shall have free Liberty to keepe away from us, and such as will come to be gone as fast as they can, the sooner the better," and he avers, "that God doth no where in his word tolerate Christian States, to give Tolerations to such adversaries of his Truth, if they have power in their hands to suppresse them" (p. 3). This is the keynote of his teaching. Intolerance of every false opinon or practise is the duty of the Puritans of England,

in their conflict with error. He has heard of a compact made by some planters in the West Indies, which "firmly provides free stable-room and litter for all kinde of consciences, be they never so dirty or jadish; making it actionable, yea, treasonable, to disturbe any man in his Religion, or to discommend it, whatever it be," but he rejoices that "God abhorring such loathsome beverages, hath in his righteous judgement blasted that enterprize" (p. 4). Four things he detests: "The standing of the Apocrypha in the Bible; Forrainers dwelling in my Countrey, to crowd out native Subjects into the corners of the Earth; Alchymized coines; Tolerations of divers Religions, or of one Religion in segregant shapes" (p. 5). "To authorise an untruth," he affirms, "is to build a Sconce against the walls of heaven, to batter God out of his chaire" (p. 6). He brings all his arguments to establish the truth of his position. Augustines tongue had not owed his mouth one penny-rent though he had never spake word more in it, but this, Nullum malum pejus libertate errandi'' (p. 8). (No evil is worse than liberty to teach falsely.) The Scriptures teach, he affirms, that "nothing makes free but Truth, and Truth saith, there is no Truth but one" (p. 9). If there is room in England for the Errorists whom he catalogues on page 11, then there is room for the mythical and unclean sprites he mentions over against them, "In a word room for Hell above ground."

Lest any one may misunderstand his position he reaffirms it. "It is said, That Men ought to have Liberty of their Conscience and that it is persecution to debarre them of it: I can rather stand amazed then reply to this: it is an astonishment to think that the braines of men should be parboyl'd in such impious ignorance; Let all the wits under the Heavens lay their heads together and finde an Assertion worse then this (one excepted) I will petition to be chosen the universall Ideot of the world" (p. 12). Hence Parliament should enact "some peremptory Statutory Act' against Error, and every prophet should preach against it. All infants should be baptized, "though their Parents judgements be against it'' (p. 17). He gives warning of a "new sprung Sect of phrantasticks, which would perswade themselves and others, that they have discovered the Nor-west passage to Heaven. These wits of the game, cry up and downe in corners such bold ignotions of a

new Gospell, new Christ, new Faith, and new gay-nothings, as trouble unsetled heads, querulous hearts, and not a little grieve the Spirit of God." "Blasphemers," he calls them, "a late fry of croaking frogs.' "I cannot imagine why the Holy Ghost should give Timothie the solemnest charge, was ever given mortal man, to observe the Rules he had given, till the comming of Christ, if new things must be expected' (p. 19).

There is so much power in false doctrine, "that the least Error, if grown sturdy and pressed, shall set open the Spittle-doore of all the squint-ey'd, wry-necked, and brasenfaced Errors that are or ever were of that litter" (p. 21). It is impossible, he maintains, to allow all religions their liberty, and secure regular justice and moral honesty in one and the same jurisdiction, and he expresses this in another extraordinary declaration: "If the whole conclave of Hell can so compromise, exadverse, and diametricall contradictions, as to compolitize such multimonstrous maufrey of heteroclytes and quicquidlibets quietly; I trust I may say with all humble reverence, they can do more than the Senate of Heaven" (p. 22).

This is the climax of his argument for Intolerance, and he makes at this point a whimsical digression from the development of his theme to make an attack upon the undue regard of women for the latest fashion and men's wearing of long hair. Quoting a line from Horace, “What is to hinder one from telling the Truth laughingly?” he proceeds with bitter sarcasm to deride the "nugiperous' [light-minded] Gentledame, who inquires "what dresse the Queen is in this week: what the nudius tertian [day before yesterday] fashion of the Court; . . . I look at her as the very gizzard of a trifle, the product of a quarter of a cypher, the epitome of Nothing, fitter to be kickt, if she were of a kickable substance, than either honour'd or humour'd.”

The ordinary resource of language fails him utterly and he betakes himself to a vocabulary of extraordinary violence. Their fashionable garb "transclouts them into gant-bar-geese, ill-shapen-shotten-shell-fish, Egyptian Hyeroglyphicks" (p. 26). He is sick of seeing the "gutfoundred goosdom, wherewith they are now surcingled and debauched." He derides tailors for spending their lives "in making fidle-cases for futulous womens phansies: which are the very pettitoes of Infirmity, the giblets of