woordes I spake then unto you. Another opinion was helde of mee, that I carried to sea 1600 peeces, and that I was desirous (for all the voiage y! I intended) only to get mony into my handes, and that I had made my voiage before; whereas I protest at my goinge to sea, I had but a C peeces in all, whereof I gave 25 to my wife, and the rest I tooke wth mee, and the remaind! I brought backe wth me into Englande. Another scandall was charged on me that I woulde have gone awaie from my companie, and lefte them at Guiana; but there are a great many woorthy men, wch accompanied me alwaies and knowe my intent was nothinge so. All these are the material pointes wch I thought good to speake of. my I am at this instant, (beinge the subiecte of deathe), to render accounte to God, and I proteste (as I shall appeare before him) this that I have here delivered and spoken is true: yet I will speake a worde or two more, and but a word or two, because I will not bee over troublesome to M Shr. There was a reporte spred, that I should reioice at the death of L. of Essex and that I shoulde, at that instant, take Tobacco in his presence; when (I proteste) I shed teares at his deathe, thoughe I was (I confesse) one of the faction. At the very time of his deathe, and all the while of his preparation, I was in the Armorie, and at the further ende, where I coulde but see him. He sente for mee, but I did not goe to him for I hearde he desired to see mee.' Therefore I lamented his deathe, as I had good cause, for it was the woorse for mee, as it proved : for after he was gone, I was little beloved. Nowe I intreate you all to ioigne wth me in prayer, that the great God of heaven, whom I have grevously offended, woulde forgive mee. For I have beene a man full of all vanities, and have lived a synfull and wicked life in a synfull callinge; havinge bin a Soldio, a Captaine bothe by lande and sea, and also a Courtier, wch are only helpes and waies to make a man wicked in all these places. Wherfore I desire you all to praye wth mee that God woulde pardon and forgive me my synnes, and cast them all out of his sight and remembrance; and that for his Sonne, my only Savio! Jesus Christ his sake, he woulde receive me into his everlastinge kingdome, where is life eternal. And so I take my leave of you all, and will nowe make my peace wth God. And after a proclamation made, that all shoulde departe from of the scaffolde, he prepared himselfe to die, givinge awaie his bever hatte, and wrought night cap, wth some mony to some of his acquaintance that stoode neere him and then tooke his leave of the Lordes, knightes, and gentlemen. Hee desired the Erle of Arundell, y he woulde informe his Mati 1 There is some confusion here, probably arising from the omission of a line or two in copying. of that weh he spoke; and to intreat him, that there might bee no scandalous pamphletts or wrightings published to defame him after his deathe. And so puttinge of his gowne and dublet, he made a longe prayer upon his knees, the Deane of Westm! knelinge by him, and prayinge wth him all the while; wch beinge ended, he called to the Executioner to fetche the fatall instrument (as he called it) wch beinge denied him, he saide, I pray you let mee see it; thincke you, I am afraide of it? Whereupon it was shewed him; and he felte the edge wth his thumbe, and wth a smilinge countenance he saide [to] the Shr. This is a sharpe medicine, but a phisitian that will cure all diseases. Then goinge to eche side of the scaffolde, he intreated the people to praye for him, that God woulde assist him, and give him strengthe. Then being asked weh waie he woulde lie, towardes the windowe, where the Lordes stoode, or no, he went aboute the blocke, and laide his hed from the Lordes, and said, So bee it the harte bee stronge, it is no matter where the hed lieth; and then prayinge, havinge forgiven the Executioner, and givinge him a signe when he shoulde doe his office (as he laye prayinge and callinge upon God) at twoe strookes he tooke of his head. I may observe, in conclusion, that the same old MS. volume contains also a copy of the familiar lines said to have been found. in Sir Walter's Bible after his death, but with some variations from the commonly received version, as follows: Even so dooth tyme take up withe truste, Our youthe, and ioies and al wee have; And paies us but w age and duste, QT Wa: RALEYGH. THE BOSTON LIGHT INFANTRY. SPEECH AT THE DINNER ON THEIR SEVENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY, OCTOBER 18, 1873. I THANK you, Gentlemen, most heartily for this kind reception. I thank you, in behalf of your past Commanders, for the compliment you have paid them, and more particularly for any part of that compliment which I may appropriate to myself. I did not fail to recognize amidst your cheers some sounds which, though strange and unaccustomed of late years, were once familiar and welcome music to my ears. I am here to make no formal or elaborate speech. I have come merely to answer once more to the roll-call of the old Corps with which I was so actively and proudly associated in years long past. I could not resist the summons to join you, though at some personal inconvenience, in celebrating this seventy-fifth anniversary of a Company which was originally organized under the excellent Daniel Sargent, at a critical period of our history, to support John Adams as President of the United States, and George Washington as Lieutenant-general of the American Provisional Army. Had I failed of an appearance, I should have been afraid to meet our worthy associate, Sheriff Clark, lest he should have a Capias in his pocket, and should serve it upon me without ceremony. It is nearly forty years since I resigned the command of the Corps, and about forty-five years since I first joined it as Ensign. may be pardoned for remembering that I was offered at the same moment, in 1829, the ensigncy of the Boston Light In I fantry and the captaincy of one of the other volunteer companies of Boston. I chose the humbler station in your service, and have never regretted the decision. I may remember, too, that I was then fresh from the command of the Harvard Washington Corps, a company of the undergraduates of the University at Cambridge, which had no little celebrity in its day, and which I have often regretted was ever suffered to die out. I know of no more manly and useful exercise for young men, not even cricket matches or boat races. John Milton, I think, included military discipline in his scheme of a perfect education. And at the very time that essay was written in Old England, the earliest legislators of New England were giving unequivocal evidence that they understood the value of training the youth, and even the children of their day, to the service of defence. It is a striking historical fact, which I have never seen alluded to elsewhere, and which recently met my eye in looking over our old colonial records, that the Great and General Court of Massachusetts, as early as 1645, provided by law for children, as young as ten years of age, being exercised with small arms, and even with bows and arrows. Here is the record, with all its queer spelling and quaint abbreviations: "Whereas it is conceived y y training up of youth to y art & practice of armes wilbe of great use in y country in divers respects, and amonge y rest y y use of bowes and arrowes may be of good concernment in defect of powder, upon any occasion, It is therefore Ordered, y all youth wthin this jurisdiction, from ten yeares ould to ye age of sixteen yeares, shalbe instructed by some one of yo Officers of y band, or some other experienced Souldier whom y chiefe Officer shall appoint, upon y usual training dayes, in y exercise of armes, as small guns, halfe pikes, bowes & arrowes, &c., according to y discretion of y said Officer or Souldier, provided y no child shalbe taken to y exercise against yeir parents minds;-Y! order to be of force wthin one month after y publication hereof." This was in May, 1645. It must have been an amusing sight, -those little companies of boys, in their primitive costumes, with their little guns and bows and arrows, solemnly drilling on the Common, then, and for a century afterward, in the joint occupancy of the cows. It was no exercise of sport or play, but a matter of legal regulation and enforcement, a part of the discipline by which our State was built up. And thus it is in strict accordance with old Puritan precedents that we now find our Latin schools and High schools and Chauncy schools furnishing some of the best examples of military drill, and sometimes supplying the chosen escorts of our civic processions. Our fathers, it is true, in their day, had wild beasts and wilder men to contend against. But the extermination or extinction of such dangerous and ferocious creatures all except the Tigers,1 which this occasion seems to show have not been extinguished, has by no means put an end to the necessity of being prepared for self-defence. We have too recently been involved in the stern realities of war, for the preservation of the Union, to require any reminder on that point. I, certainly, cannot forget that one of the very last services I performed in connection with this Corps was to present a standard, in their name, to the Forty-third Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, in November, 1862, on Boston Common, just as it was going forth to the battle-fields of the Constitution. My friends, I am a member of the Peace Society, and one of its honored vice-presidents. I sympathize most heartily in the general aims and principles of that Society, and especially in that great principle of Arbitration which has been so grandly signalized and vindicated, during the last year or two, under the leading influence of the father of one of your recent lieutenants, Mr. Adams. I pray God that neither foreign war nor civil war may ever call again for the intervention of force, at home or abroad, on land or on sea. As deeply as any one I feel, and have always felt, that war of any sort is a reproach and a stain upon Christian civilization. But I am by no means sanguine that preparations for defence can ever be safely abandoned. More especially do I see little chance of an entire cessation of those emergencies and exigencies in our great cities, which, like the terrible Boston Fire last November, may call imperatively for the employment of bayonets to aid the civil police in repressing robbery and violence. And hence I am here to offer my best 1 The familiar title of the Company. |