Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/67

 INTRODUCTION. lix

in the year 1653, but his age is not known, though at that time he could not have been more than twenty. Mrs. Bradstreet says, "It pleafed God to keep me a long time without a child, which was a great grief to me, and coll mee many prayers and tears before I obtaind one." * Samuel was, —

" The Son of Prayers, of vowes, of teares, The child I ftaj'd for many yeares." f

and she was very loth to part with him, but she committed him at last to the care of Providence, and was rewarded by welcoming him home safe, in July, i66i.|

Her husband's mission to England in January, 1661-2, must have been an event of great importance in her life. Devotedly attached to him as she was, and unhappy when separated from him for even a short time, the circumstances under which he went were such as to make her particularly anxious during his absence. The news of the restoration of Charles II. to the throne had been somewhat coldly received by the Massachusetts colonists. They were justly apprehensive that their indifference, if not actual hostility, to his cause during the Civil War, their severe treatment of the Quakers, and their assumption of the powers of an independent state, might now be brought up against them, and result in a serious diminution of the privileges they had up to that time enjoyed. The complaints of the Quakers, and the exertions of those who had suffered by or who were disaffected with the Massachusetts men, were so violent, and met with such success, that the latter were obliged, by the order of the King, to send agents to plead


 * See page 5. f See page 24. J See page 28.

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