Waltham, Massachusetts

“ WALTHAM ABBEY, or Waltham Holy Cross, a market town in the Epping parliamentary division of Essex, England, on the Lea, and on the Cambridge branch of the Great Eastern railway, 13 m. N. by E. from London. Pop. of urban district of Waltham Holy Cross (1901) 6549. The neighbouring county of the Lea valley is flat and unlovely, but to the E. and N.E. low hills rise in the direction of Hainault and Epping Forests. ”

“ Edward Garfield, the founder of this new American family, did not long linger near the boundaries of Boston. His first share in the distribution of land to the freemen, by the town, was a small lot or homestall of six acres, on the line of territory afterwards incorporated as the town of Waltham. Another general grant of land by the town, in 1636, 'to the freemen and all the townsmen then inhabiting,' one hundred and twenty in number, called the Great Dividends, gave to Garfield a tract of thirty acres, the whole of which was within the territory set off to Waltham. ”

“ SMUG.
Go? I’ll go in spite of all the belles in Waltham.
SIR JOHN. The question is, good neighbour Banks—let me see: the Moon shines to night,—there’s not a narrow bridge betwixt this and the forest,—his brain will be settled ere night; he may go, he may go, neighbour Banks. Now we want none but the company of mine host Blague at the George at Waltham; if he were here, our Consort were full. Look where comes my good host, the Duke of Norfolk’s man! and how? and how? a hem, grass and hay! we are not yet mortall; let’s live till we die, and be merry; and there’s an end. ”

“ Brave Winthrop, marching with the city elegants, seems to have been a little startled to find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or ought to do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is distributed over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, like the Sixty-ninth, to show us that continental provincialism is as bad as that of Coos County, New Hampshire, or of Broadway, New York. ”

“ It is significant of the altered conditions of modern life that a larger proportion of the population of Washington—the serious settlement of which dates back but a little over forty years, which spreads over more than eight times the area of Massachusetts, and which is not yet a manufacturing State—resides in cities of over 8,000 inhabitants, than was the case in Massachusetts as late as 1840, nearly two centuries and a quarter after the Plymouth landing, and when it had long been the principal manufacturing State in the Union. ”

“ The Mount Wollaston settlement was, indeed, the first recorded instance of what in later Massachusetts history is technically known as “a liquor nuisance,” and the neighbors determined that considerations of public safety required that it should be abated. Those were primitive times. They enjoyed few of the advantages of our more developed civilization, and while there were no ladies of the vicinage to wait upon the then lord of Merry Mount in a spirit of prayerful remonstrance, there was also no State constabulary before whom the “rumseller” trembled and fled. ”

“ If she can scoff at Freedom, and its great charter spurn,
Must we of Massachusetts from truth and duty turn?
We hunt your bondmen, flying from Slavery's hateful hell;
Our voices, at your bidding, take up the bloodhound's yell;
We gather, at your summons, above our fathers' graves,
From Freedom's holy altar-horns to tear your wretched slaves!
Thank God! not yet so vilely can Massachusetts bow;
The spirit of her early time is with her even now;
Dream not because her Pilgrim blood moves slow and calm and cool,
She thus can stoop her chainless neck, a sister's slave and tool! ”

“ Will any man pretend that the name of Andros, and that of Winthrop, are heard with the same sensations in any village of New England? Is not gratitude the sentiment that attends the latter, and disgust the feeling excited by the former? In the Massachusetts, then, there are persons descended from some of their ancient governors, counsellors, judges, whose fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, are remembered with esteem by many living, and who are mentioned in history with applause, as benefactors to the country, while there are others who have no such advantage. ”

“ In intellectual tastes, as in all else, the Union showed well-marked divisions between New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and the Southern States. New England was itself divided between two intellectual centres,—Boston and New Haven. The Massachusetts and Connecticut schools were as old as the [Pg 76] colonial existence; and in 1800 both were still alive, if not flourishing.
Society in Massachusetts was sharply divided by politics. In 1800 one half the population, represented under property qualifications by only some twenty thousand voters, was Republican. ”

“ Bluff King Hal was very partial to Waltham and enjoyed the hunting in the forest. He frequently stayed at his house in the Romeland, still standing at the north-east corner. There are many stories, often with the “merry monarch” for a hero, connected with his patronage of Waltham. One day he left his hunting companions and returned to Waltham in the guise of one of his attendants, and, being invited to the abbot’s table, ate heartily of the sirloin of beef placed before him, to the great admiration of his host. ”

“ When the king asked the Abbot of Cluny to intercede for her soul, he said, "We loved her tenderly in her lifetime; we do not cease to love her in death."
A little way to the left of Waltham Cross, now a gateway to the park of Theobalds, stands Temple Bar, stone for stone intact as it was in the days when traitors' heads were raised above it in Fleet Street, although the original wooden gates have gone. A portion of the richly-carved top of the gate is still in existence in London. Waltham Abbey is probably close to that part of the river Lea where King Alfred defeated the Danes. ”

“ Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton's latest pound, But in Heaven's name keep your honor, keep the heart o' the Bay State sound!" Where's the man for Massachusetts! Where's the voice to speak her free? Where's the hand to light up bonfires from her mountains to the sea? Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she dumb in her despair? Has she none to break the silence? Has she none to do and dare? O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her rusted shield, And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner's tattered field 1840. ”

“ The settlers of New Hampshire were mostly Puritans, and thoroughly in sympathy with the political-religious system of Massachusetts. Massachusetts obtained jurisdiction over Maine through purchase from Gorges, and that territory remained attached to Massachusetts until 1820. Vermont had no separate existence until the Revolution.
The colonies of Connecticut and New Haven were in full sympathy with the religious and political system of Massachusetts. ”

“ Wachusett is, in fact, the observatory of the State. There lay Massachusetts, spread out before us in its length and breadth, like a map. There was the level horizon, which told of the sea on the east and south, the well-known hills of New Hampshire on the north, and the misty summits of the Hoosac and Green Mountains, first made visible to us the evening before, blue and unsubstantial, like some bank of clouds which the morning wind would dissipate, on the northwest and west. ”

“ She must efface Lexington and Bunker Hill from her memory, and tear the old rock of Plymouth out from her bosom. These are prejudices which Massachusetts will not conquer, till the ocean ceases to wash her shore, and granite to harden her hills. Massachusetts has conquered a good many things, as Mr. Webster tells us. I think there are several other things we shall try our hand upon, before we conquer our prejudice in favor of the unalienable rights of man. ”

“ State Societies in the New England States, which has been already accomplished in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, the operations of the New England Society during the past year have been very much confined to Massachusetts, and hereafter it will be only a State Society. ”

“ Waltham, or Wealdham, from the Saxon “a dwelling near the forest,” an ancient and quaint market town, lies on the great North road. Tovi, standard-bearer to Canute, after building a few houses, set up a church here in the 11th century in which the Holy Rood, accredited with miraculous power, was guarded by priests. Dugdale in his Monasticon states that Harold, when visiting Waltham, was healed of the palsy, and, being overcome with gratitude, granted lands and endowments to the priests, increased their number, rebuilt the church, and set up an establishment for the furtherance of learning. ”

“ The frontier north of Massachusetts had thus, for the most part, come into being without any action on her part, except in the two settlements last noted. Owing to the location between the French and English, and the uncompromising geographic factors of soil and climate, the vast forested area, comprising over two thirds of all New England, increased but little in population throughout the century; and by 1700 New Hampshire had but six thousand souls, or less than that of the Bay Colony at the time that Wheelwright left it. ”

“ The sentiments that brought those humble men to the little green at Lexington, and to the bridge at Concord, which carried them up the slope of Bunker Hill, and which drove forth the British troops from Boston, never again to press the soil of Massachusetts,—that sentiment still governs the councils of Massachusetts, and rules in the hearts of her people. The feeling which governed the men of that glorious epoch of our history is the feeling of the men of Massachusetts of to-day. ”

“ Although, owing to an obscure and probably not very reputable intrigue, New Hampshire was given a separate government, the bounds of the new Massachusetts were extended to include Plymouth, Maine, and the eastern country as far as Nova Scotia. [54] Moreover, the colonists had never really possessed anything like the rights which they had claimed and exercised under the old charter. The whole system of town government, for example, had been extra-legal. ”

“ The trade is in agricultural produce and malt. On the three sides of the town away from the river are very ancient earth ramparts, and the keep-mound and some slight remains of a Norman castle still exist. (pp. 57, 59, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 74, 80, 85, 88, 91, 106, 111, 128, 142, 143.)
Waltham St Lawrence (867) . A village four and a half miles south-west of Maidenhead. (pp. 62, 90.)
Waltham, White. See White Waltham.
Wantage (4146) . A market-town in the Vale of White Horse. The railway station, Wantage Road, is nearly two and a half miles from the town. ”

“ It was now determined that “the freemen should have the power of choosing assistants, and from themselves to choose a Governor and Lieut. Governor, who with [Pg 48] the assistants should have the power of making laws and choosing officers to execute the same.” This is the brief history of the origin of a local government in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, if it may be so called. ”

“ That the influences checking the growth of Massachusetts were not wholly due to general conditions is indicated also by the fact that, while her population, in the next two decades, was considerably less than doubled, that of New Hampshire was nearly tripled, Rhode Island increased five-fold, and Connecticut four-fold. [546] The actual numbers are even more striking than the percentages. ”

“ Thus many men of wealth and education, whose conservatism would naturally have prevented their taking rash steps in their opposition to the Crown, were led to join in the Massachusetts enterprise. In April, 1630, eleven vessels sailed for America, and by the end of the year about a thousand persons had emigrated to the new colony and founded such towns as Boston, Charlestown, and Watertown. They chose as governor a wealthy and highly educated Suffolk gentleman, John Winthrop, [29] and under his able administration the colony began a career of great prosperity and importance. ”

“ The nation is so accustomed to admire her glorious deeds for freedom, that with this expectation their eyes are turned upon her. Massachusetts can do nothing in secret; Massachusetts can do nothing for herself alone; every one of her acts involves a hundred-fold responsibility. What Massachusetts does is felt from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But Massachusetts need only be herself, in order to be great. ”

“ Toward the decline of the tenth day following the meeting of Viscount Effingston and Sir Thomas Winter in the garden of the Gentleman-Pensioner, four men might have been seen riding through one of the stretches of woodland used by the King as a hunting ground and known as the forest of Waltham. Although light still lingered, a gloom was gathering over the countryside, and within the precincts of the forest the first shades of evening warned the horsemen that ere many hours the cheerless twilight which prevailed in England at that period of the year, would find them outside the gates of London. ”

“ Yet the Puritan colony was not made up of leaders. In firm intelligence, in clearly realized conceptions of Church and State, in moral fervor and spiritual exaltation, men like Winthrop and Davenport were far removed from the rank and file. The great majority of those who first came to Massachusetts were small "merchants, husbandmen, and artificers"; men with little property or none at all ”