Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/41

 INTRODUCTION. XXXlll

it was, it is not hard to realize how wretchedly the poorer portion must have fared, when we look at the picture which Dudley, one of the richest of the party, writing nine months after their arrival, so vividly presents to us of the condition of himself and his family. He says that he writes "rudely, having yet no table, nor other room to write in than by the fireside upon my knee, in this sharp winter ; to which my family must have leave to resort, though they break good manners, and make me many times forget what I would say, and say what I would not."* The new settlement at Cambridge-was begun in the spring of the next 3^ear ; and it was the intention of the settlers to make this place, which they called Newtown, the principal town of the Colony. The Governor, Deputy-Governor, and Brad- street were among those who moved out and established themselves there. The town was laid out in squares, the streets intersecting each other at right angles. Dudley's house stood on the west side of Water Street, near its southern termination at Marsh Lane, at the corner of the present Dunster and South Streets. Bradstreet's was at the corner of " Brayntree " and Wood Streets, where the University Bookstore of Messrs. Sever & Francis now is, on Harvard Square, at the corner of Brighton Street. Dud- ley's lot was half an acre in size, and Bradstreet's measured " aboute one rood." f

Governor Winthrop decided not to remain at Newtown,

Massachusetts, p. 305. This letter is the most vivid and authentic narra- tive of the labor and sufferings attendant on the planting of the Colony.
 * Dudley's Letter to the Countess of Lincoln, in Young's Chronicles of

t "The Regeftere Booke of the Lands and Houfes in the Newtowne. 1635." MS. pp. I and 27. — Holmes' History of Cambridge. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Vol. vii. pp. 7-S.

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