Page:Samuel F. Batchelder - Bits of Harvard History (1924).pdf/27

 parisons between the tone of Harvard and the English universities seem to have caused the College and its alumni to cast about for some means of refuting him by tangible evidence of its spiritual vigor. With the brilliant and distinguished Thomas Hutchinson of the class of 1727 the idea of a separate chapel befitting the institution took definite shape; and on a journey to London in 1740 he determined to exert his influence towards that end.

Now it so befell that one Samuel Holden, “of Roehampton, Parish of Putney and County of Surrey,” a rich London merchant, member of Parliament and Governor of the Bank of England, who was the leader of the English Dissenters, had already turned his benevolent gaze towards Massachusetts, that stronghold of his creed in the western world. It is related that he, or his immediate family, sent to this community the equivalent of £10,000, in money or donations for works of charity and piety. A single item comprised thirty-nine sets of Baxter’s Works in four massive volumes,—enough, one might think, to sink the ship conveying them by their own ponderosity. But such was the gratitude and veneration in which his beneficiaries held his name that when the northerly part of Worcester was set off as a separate township in 1741 it was christened Holden, and so remains to this day.