Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/103

 11 S. XII. AUG. 7, 1915

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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in his master-stroke 'The Scarlet Letter,' permeated as that is with the novelty of rare genius, at once interpreting and penetrating, has given us an adequate pic- ture, overwhelming and lurid, of the fan- tastically weird New England opening Puritan period. This particular forgotten early-time Colonial chirographic Robert I find, however, embalmed in the well-nigh immortal nay, truly immortal in the eyes of the searching New Englanders " fountain- head " pages of the inimitable Diary (now in type) quill -penned by the chatty Sew all (born 1652, died 1730), the eminent Massa- chusetts jurist, our Anglo-American Pepys. There Robert figures as Boston's "Pub- lisher," i.e., the officially appointed " Town Crier " to the halls of justice. Beyond that calling, our worthy exercised the function of keeping in running order the public town clocks. He was also occupied in starting agoing the various religious Meeting-House bells pealed loudly and solemnly to impel, not to say compel, to Sabbath and Thursday service attendance. In those performances he was aided by his spouse Marjery Williams, whose gravestone (but not his), with its exquisitely shaped lettering, may be fourd within a few feet of the obelisk placed by Benjamin Franklin to the memory of his parents.

Yet another duty fell to him upon his becoming an acting magistrate that of tying the spousal knot for impatient couples during the absence or direfully painful lack of an orthodox Congregational- bred minister, in any parish in or about Boston to be explained by the fact that the Puritan Congregational divine as well as the Estab- lished Church divine, both well fastened to snug " home " livings, feared the torments of an Atlantic Ocean crossing in vessels hardly larger than a ferry boat. Lastly, he became "clerk" to the "Military Body," afterwards the historic, well-beloved Ancient and Honorable Company of Boston, now enjoying annals told in four thick quartos, though not so venerable as its parent (of almost the same name) belonging to London, that sturdy wholesome parent, the Honour- able Artillery Company, at this moment bravely, honourably doing heroic, splendid, soliderly work in driving from innocent, blood-soaked Flanders the brutalized, un- soldierly invading hordes of Germany.

Touching Marjery Williams's past career mentioned now and then in the * Boston Records, 'so called ),there is a sampler, possibly the work of her fingers, which bears the following words :

Marjery is my name,

and England is my nation ; Heaven is my dwelling-place,

and Christ is my Salvation ; When I am dead and in my grave,

and all my bones are rotten, Then when this you see remember me.

Its letters are so faded as to preclude any exact decipherment. Whether this com- position can be said to be of local Colonial or oversea English origin, I know not.

The Bombay generosity of A.D. 1792 as- suredly was inspired by the extraordinary endurance under horrible sufferings of the- aforesaid Capt. Williams, sufferings partly chronicled in print later on in a once popular volume many times reprinted and in dif- erent American towns entitled :

" Journal of the Travels and Sufferings of Daniel Saunders, Jr., a mariner on board the ship- Commerce of Boston, which was cast away near Cape Morebet, Arabia, July 10, 1792. Published in Salem, Massachusetts, 1792."

The rupees collected were doubtless re- funded by Capt. Williams, for he came to- position and comfortable means.

A contemporary of his, another of th& Williamses of Boston, was the grantee of an odd piece of honour, the grantor being the London Heraldic Office, which conferred upon him a coat of arms, the same often claimed to be the single, solitary shield given to an Anglo-American colonist. It is blazoned by Barry and other leading English heraldic authorities thus : (?) a lion rampant gu., on a chief az. two doves rising arg. Crest, an eagle, with wings expanded, ppr., reposing his dexter foot on a mound or. Motto : " Y cadum a'e eypwym " (" The mighty and cunning"). Granted to John Williams in Boston in New England, In-

r tor-General of North America, 1767. would be interesting to know what constituted the duties of that "Inspector," and whether the title was an English military one. It is not beyond probability that the mysterious Robert Williams of previous to 1695 was a nephew of the noted Welsh-born Rev. Roger Williams (1606-83), a scribbler of scribblers and the founder of Rhode Island, banished from Massachusetts, 1636. I should like to be able to show that the above 1767 shield is allied to the arms of that scribbler, whose ancient family district Flintshire, I think is now fairly fixed, thanks to the Rhode Island antiquaries.

To Alexander Williams, of Old Morse Farm, Harvard, Mass, (whose grandfather was the grandson of Capt. Robert Williams), I am beholden for my copy of the 1792