Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/43

 INTRODUCTION. XXXV

At length there was a complaint of want of room. Men were accordingly sent to visit Ipswich, with a view to removing there. After much discussion, however, the town was enlarged, and the people remained.

In 1635 Dudley and Bradstreet are found entered among the inhabitants of Ipswich.* As early as Jan. 17, 1632, O.S., fearing some trouble from their French neighbors, among other precautions, it was agreed at a General Court, "that a plantation should be begun at Agawam, (being the best place in the land for tillage and cattle,) least an enemy, finding it void, should possess and take it from us. The governour's son (being one of the assistants) was to undertake this, and to take no more out of the bay than twelve men ; the rest to be supplied at the coming of the next ships." f This was done in March, and the little settlement was called Ipswich in August, 1634.:]: The ninth church in the Colony, being the next to that at Cambridge, was gathered there in the same year.§ Mr. Nathaniel Ward was made pastor of the Church, his place being supplied in 1636 by Mr. Nathaniel Rogers. || Ips- wich was included in the order of the General Court passed September 3d, 1635, that no dwelling-house should be above half a mile from the meeting-house.^ This precautionary measure, owing to greater danger from the Indians, was followed in the spring of 1636-7 by orders that watches should be kept, that people should travel with

t Winthrop's New England, Vol. i. pp. 9S-9. X Mass. Colony Records, Vol. i. p. 123. § Winthrop's New England, Vol. i. p. 94, n. 2. II Johnson's Wonder-working Providence, p. 88. ^ Mass. Colony Records, Vol i p. 157
 * Felt's History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton, 1834, pp. lo-ii.

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