me as furnishing the key to all our own free institutions. He
has given us, too, the history of the old Mother Country during
the very period when the founders of the American colonies, as
he has reminded us this evening, were being shaped and moulded
THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE. 181
for their great wilderness work, under that Maiden Queen, as
she was wont to be called, in honor of whom our whole conti
nent, or certainly our whole coast, once bore the name, which
one of our largest and most ancient commonwealths still bears,
the name of Virginia. You all remember that even the Pil
grim Fathers, in the ever memorable compact which they signed
in the cabin of the " Mayflower " on the llth (21st) of Novem
ber, 1620, designated their voyage as undertaken " to plant the
first colony in the northern part of Virginia."
Elizabeth had then been dead for seventeen years, but her
imperious refusal of all suitors for her hand had been inscribed
where it was never to be forgotten. The great events of the
latter part of her reign, at least, were familiar as household
words to those by whom our colonies were founded. It was but
yesterday that I was showing to Mr. Froude a contemporary
account of " the Order and Manner of the execution of Mary,
Queen of Scots," which I had found carefully copied into the
common-place book of Adam Winthrop, the father of our Gov
ernor. And as he thinks that it may never yet have been
printed, I propose, with our Secretary s leave, that it shall go
into the next serial number of our printed Proceedings. 1
But I have said more than enough for the introduction of one
who, as I have suggested, in writing the history of his own
country at a period when it was our country also, or certainly
when it was the country of our fathers, has long ago secured for
himself the most respectful and cordial welcome to our shores,
and who we rejoice has at length come over to receive that wel
come. I present to you, gentlemen, our distinguished Honorary
Member, Mr. Froude.
1 This account will be found in the Note on the next page.
NOTE.
[From the MS. Common-place Book of Adam Winthrop.]
The manner fr order of y 9 . execution of y*. late Queene of Scottes, w* y . icordes
uf* she spake at her Deathe, truely sett downe by Doctor 1 " ffleiclier Deane of
Peterboroice.
On Wednesday y? viii of ffebruary no 1586 there assembled at yf
Castle of ffordringham yf Earles of Shrewsbury & Kent, w th divers
Knightes & gentlemen Justices of yf peace of yf yeare in those Coun
tries. About viii of yf clocke, yf Earles & Sherifes of yf Shire went
upp to yf Scottish Queene, whom they fownde prayinge on hir knees,
w f 1 hir gentlewomen & men. And the Sherifes rememberinge hir y* yf
time was at hand, she awnswered & sayde she was readie. Then she was
ledde by yf armes from hir chamber into the yf chamber of presence,
where w 1 ! 1 many exhortacions to hir people to feare God, & to live in
obedience, kissinge hir women, she gave hir hande to hir men to kisse :
prayinge them all not to sorowe, but reioice & pray for hir. She was
brought downe yf stayers by two Souldiers : Then beinge belowe she
stayed, & lookinge backe she sayed she was evill attended, & desired yf
Lordes she might for woman hoodes sake, have two of hir women to
wayte uppon hir. Then they sayde, they were onely w Miolden for y. 1 it
was feared, by their passionate cryinge they would disquiet hir Spirit, &
disturbe yf execution. She sayde, I will promise for them y! they shall
not doe so. Then two of them whom she willed were brought unto hir.
Then she spake muche unto Welbin hir man, & charged him as he woulde
answere before God, to deliver hir Speache & message to hir Sonne in
suche sorte as she did speake them, all w c . h tended onely to will him to
governe wisely, in yf feare of God, & to take heede to whom he be-
tooke his chiefest trust ; & not to geve an occasion to be evill thought of
by the Queene of Inglande, hir good sister, to certelie him she dyed a
true Skotte, a true ffrenche, & a true Catholique. Aboute X of yf clocke
she was brought downe into yf greate hall, where in yf middest of y?
[182]
NOTE. 183
hovvse, & agaynste yf chimnie, (wherein was a greate fire) was a skaffolde
sett upp of twoe foote height, & xii foote broade, havinge two steppes to
come upp ; about yf scaffold went a rayle halfe a yarde highte rownde
covered w 4 ! 1 black cotten : So was hir stoole, yf Lordes forme, y? blocke,
& a pillowe for hir to kneele uppon. There did sitt uppon yf skaffolde
yf two Earles, yf Sherife stoode there, & yf two executioners. When
they were sett, Mf Beale, Clerke of yf Cowncell did reade hir Ma". 68 Com
mission for hir execution, under yf broade Scale, after w c . h yf Deane of
Peterborowe beinge directed by yf Lordes to speake unto hir, for yf bet
ter pfparation to dye a penitent Christian, in yf true faythe of Christ,
began at yf motion of yf Earle of Shrewsbury his exhortation, w c . h as
sone as he had begone, she sayde w 4 ! 1 a lowd voice, peace Mf Deane, I
will not heare you. I say nothinge sayde he, but y* I will iustifie before
yf ma ti6 of yf most highest. So proceedinge, she cryed alowde agayne,
peace Mf Deane, I will not heare you, you have nothinge to doe w 4 . h me,
nor I wyth you. Then was he willed to silence, for any further molest-
inge hir mynde. She sayed, so it is best, for I am fully setled & resolved
to dye in yf Catholique Romishe faythe. W c . h when yf Lordes hearde ;
the Earle of Kent sayde, albeit Madam, you refuse yf offered mercies of
yf most highest, yet we will offer of prayers to God for you ; hopinge he
will heare us. And if it might stande w 4 . h his good will, he would vouch
safe to open your eies, & to lighten your hearte, w th yf true knowledge of
his will, & to dye therin. She sayed, doe, & I will pray. Then yf Deane
pronounced a prayer, w c . h yf slanders by folowed ; all w c . h while she hav
inge a crucifixe betwene hir handes prayed much lowder in latin. The
prayer beinge done, she kneeled downe, & prayed to this effect: for
Christ his afflicted Churche, & for an ende of their troubles, for hir
Sonne y* he might rule uprightly, & be converted to yf Catholique Rom
ishe Churche. She prayed y* yf Queenes Ma 4i . e might longe reigne peace
ably, might prosper, & serve God. She confessed she hoped to be saved
onely by yf bloude of Christe, at yf foote of whose picture presented on
yf crucifixe she woulde willingly shedd hir bloude. She prayed to all yf
Sayrites of heaven to pray for hir, & y* yf God of heaven woulde of his
goodnes averte his plauges from this silly Ilande, & y 4 God would geve
hir life, & forgeve hir sinnes, & y* he woulde receave hir Soule into his
heavenly handes. And then she rose upp, & was by two of hir women,
& yf two executioners disrobed into hir peticoote. Then she sayed, she
was not wont to be undressed before such a number, nor by such gromes.
Then she kissed hir women, & one of them began to crye, to whom she
sayed, peace, cry not, I haue promised yf contrarie : Crye not for me, but
reioice, & lifted upp hir handes & blessed them, & likewise hir men not
184 NOTE.
farre of. Then sodenly she kneeled downe most resolutly, & w . h yf least
token of any feare of deathe y* might be. And after y* one of hir
women had knitte a kertcher about hir eies, she spake alowde this psalme
in latin In te Domine confido, ne confundar in ceternu. Then lay she
dowue very quietly stretchinge out hir body, & layinge hir necke over y?
blocke, cryed, in manus tuas Domine, &c. One of yf executioners helde
downe hir two handes : & yf other did at two strokes w l . h an axe cutt
of hir heade, w c . h fallinge out of hir atyre appeared very graye, & neare
powlde. So houldinge it upp, yf people sayed, God save yf Queene, &
so perishe all hir enemies, & yf enemies of the gospell. All thinges
about hir, & belonginge to hir, were taken from yf executioners, & they
were not suffered so muche as to haue their aprons before them till they
were washed. The bloudy clothes, yf blocke, & whatsoever els bloudy,
was brent in yf chymny fire. The body was caryed upp into yf chamber,
hir boweles taken out, embawmed, seared, & resteth to the buriall.
[Then follows in a different style of chirography, though by the same hand :]
Shee was first roiallie buried in the Cathedrall Churche of Peterbur-
roughe. But aftervvardes shee was brought from thence to Westminster,
& buried in Kinge Henry the Seventhes chappie, where a princely tombe
was made over her, by the Kinges ma 1 ! 6 her Sonne in the yere of
his reigne of Greate Britayne, &c.
The saide Queene of Scottes was the daughter & sole heire of James
the 5. Kinge of Scotts, & was borne the 8 daye of December, 1542.
beiiige but 5. daies olde when her father died. Shee was first maried to
Francys the eldest sonne of Henry yf Seconde, Kinge of France, who
reigned 2 yeres after his father, by whom shee had no issue. Then shee
retourned into Scotlande, & maried Henry the lorde Darly, the eldest
sonne unto Mathewe, Erie of Lenox, by whom shee had issue the Kinges
ma 1 ! 6 James the 6. who was but a yere olde when his father was slayne,
& his mother fled into Englande, where shee remained pfsoner till she
died, w c . h was the 8 daie of February, 1586, in the 44 yere of her age, &
in the 29 yere of the reigne of Queene Elizabethe. 1
1 The following letter from Queen Elizabeth to Sir Amias Paulet is also taken
from the Common Place Book of Adam Winthrop (b. 1548, d. 1623). William
Tytler, in his "Inquiry, Historical and Critical, into the Evidence against Mary,
Queen of the Scots" (4th ed. 1790, vol. ii. pp. 320, 403), prints this letter from "a
collection of remarkable trials published, London, 1715." In commenting on the
letter, he says : " What a picture we have here of the heroine of England ! Woo
ing a faithful servant to commit a clandestine murder, which she herself durst not
avow ! " Tytler feels that he is justified in giving this interpretation to the letter,
NOTE. 185
by others which followed from Walsingham and Davison, written by order of the
Queen, in which the proposal is made in plain terms. Miss Aikin also prints the
letter in her History of Queen Elizabeth ; and so does Froude, from " MSS. Mary
Q. of Scots." But the text in no two of these copies is alike ; and the copy from
which we now print varies from all these. Neither copy bears a date, but Froude
refers the letter to " August, 1586," which was probably just before Queen Mary
left Chartley Manor for Fotheringay Castle, under the conduct of Sir Amias Paulet,
one of her keepers. Sir Drue Drmy, another of them, was a Suffolk man, not far
off from Groton, and Adam Winthrop might have had the letter from him. She
was executed on the 8th of February following.
A copie of y* Q. Ma tie * LrC to Sir Amias Pawlett:
Amias, my most faythfull & carefull servaunt, God rewarde the treble folde for
thy most troublesome charge so well discharged, if you knewe, my Amias, howe
kindely my gratefull harte accepteth your speedie endevotirs, faythfull actions,
yo r . wise orders, & safe regarde, performed in so dangerous & craftie a charge, it
would ease your travailes, & reioice your harte : In w oh I charge you to carry this
most iust thought, y . I cannot ballance in any waight of my iudgment y value
y*. I prise you att. And suppose y*. no treasure can countervayle so greate a fayth.
And I shall condemne myselfe in y*. faulte w h I never committed, if I rewarde not
such desertes, yea, lett me lacke when I most neede, if I acknowledge not suche a
meritt, w th a reward non omnibus datu. But lett yo r . wicked murtheresse knowe,
howe w th hartie sorowe hir vile desertes compeil these orders, & bidde hir from me
aske God forgevenes, for hir treacherous dealinge towardes y e . saver of hir life
many yeres : to y e . intolerable perill of hir owne : and yet not content w* so many
forgevenesses, must fall agayne so horrebly, farre passinge a womans thought,
muche more a princes. In steade of excusinge[s] whereof not one can serve, it
beinge so playnely confessed by y 6 . actours of my guiltlesse deathe, lett repentance
take place, & lett not y* fiende possesse hir so as hir better parte be loste, w c . h I pray
w th handes lifted upp to him y 4 . may both save & spill, w th my most lovinge adieu,
& pray[er] for thy longe life.
Your assured & lovinge Soveraigne
as therto by good desert enduced,
ELIZA: REGINA.
To my faythfull AMIAS.
FOLSOM, SOMERBY, AND SEWA11D.
REMARKS AT A MEETING OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
DECEMBER 12, 1872.
IT devolves upon me this morning, gentlemen, to announce to
you officially, according to our custom, the recent deaths of one
of our Resident Members, one of our Corresponding Members,
and one of our Honorary Members.
You will pardon me, I am sure, for speaking of them more
cursorily than I might have done, were I not assured that others,
far better able than myself to do justice to the characters and
services of those whom we have lost, are present and prepared
for the purpose. It will be mine only to open the way for their
more elaborate tributes.
Mr. CHARLES FOLSOM, a Resident Member of our Society,
died at Cambridge, on the 8th of November last, in the seventy-
seventh year of his age. Graduated at Harvard with the class
of 1813, he had served the University faithfully as a tutor from
1821 to 1823, and as Librarian from 1823 to 1826. He was
longer known to us all as the Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum,
to which he rendered most valuable services. He had edited
and published several volumes of the Latin Classics, the
Select Orations of Cicero, and the Select Books of Livy, among
others, which were enriched by his learned annotations. Dur
ing the nine or ten years of his association with our own Society,
before illness and infirmities had deprived us of his presence at
our meetings, he had made interesting and instructive communi
cations, from time to time, on historical or literary subjects.
The conjectural origin of our national motto, E Pluribus Unum,
[186]
FOLSOM, SOMERBY, AND SEWARD. 187
in the Moretum of Virgil ; and an additional verse to the grand
old Latin hymn, Dies irce, dies ilia, which he had somewhere
discovered in the course of his diligent researches, will be
remembered by us all.
Bat no mere enumeration of the offices he had filled, or of the
works or words which he had given to the public, can furnish
any adequate impression of the man. He was a modest and
retiring person ; distrustful of himself, almost to a fault ; and
seemed hardly conscious of his own rich and rare accomplish
ments. Few more accurate and learned linguists, bibliologists,
or classical scholars, have lived in our day and land. And, cer
tainly, there has been no one more ready and eager to devote
all the ripe fruit of his careful and critical studies to the service
of his friends, in utter disregard of his own fame. If Prescott
and Sparks and Palfrey, not to name others of our most noted
and valued historians, living or dead, were with us here to-day,
they would unite in bearing the fullest testimony to the ever
kind, assiduous, and generous aid which he had rendered them
in the last corrections, if not in the earlier preparation, of their
works. Indeed, the testimony of more than one of them is on
record where it cannot be lost. Prescott, in the preface to his
" Conquest of Peru," says: " I must not omit to mention my
obligations to my friend Charles Folsom, Esq., the learned
Librarian of the Athenaeum, whose minute acquaintance with
the grammatical structure and the true idiom of our English
tongue has enabled me to correct many inaccuracies into which
I had fallen in the composition both of this and of my former
works." And again, in the preface to his History of Philip II.,
he records his obligations to Mr. Folsom, " who," he says, " has
repeated the good offices he had before rendered me in revising
my manuscript for the press."
The preface of Dr. Palfrey s admirable History of New Eng
land concludes as follows : " It only remains for me to avow my
obligations to my almost life-long friend, Mr. Charles Folsom,
for the very important favor of a careful revisal of the sheets of
this volume as they passed through the press. At every step
his critical sagacity and practised judgment have stood me greatly
in stead."
188 FOLSOM, SOMERBY, AND SEWARD.
Many more names might be added to the three I have men
tioned, of those whom he had quietly and disinterestedly helped
in winning the reputation they enjoyed. And any one who is in
the way of feeling the sore need there is, in our printing estab
lishments at this hour, of faithful, intelligent, accomplished, and
learned proof-readers, will be able to appreciate how great was
the help which Mr. Folsom afforded, to all who were so fortunate
as to secure for their writings his friendly and thorough super
vision. I know not where we shall find his like again in this
respect.
But I must not omit to lay one wreath on the grave of our
worthy friend, which might well excite the envy of any man.
It happened to me to be brought into frequent association, dur
ing the last years of his life, with the heroic and noble-hearted
Farragut. He never met me without the most eager and affec
tionate inquiries as to his cherished friend Mr. Folsom, and he
never hesitated to say that he owed him the deepest debt of
gratitude for his early and devoted care and instruction. " He
made me almost all that I am," was the substance, if not the
exact language, of his emphatic acknowledgment. And when
we remember what Farragut was, and what he did and dared
for his country, we can appreciate the full value of such a trib
ute. It might almost recall to us the acknowledged indebted
ness of Alexander the Great to Aristotle.
I dare not trust my memory in an attempt to recount the
precise circumstances of Mr. Folsom s relations to Farragut. I
believe they met in the Mediterranean, when Farragut was a
midshipman, and when our friend, soon after leaving college,
may have held, as I believe he did, the position of Instructor in
the Navy ; or it may have been when he was accompanying the
late Hon. Luther Bradish, of New York, in his semi-official tour
to the East, about the year 1820, with a view of collecting in
formation as to the trade of the Mediterranean, and of facilitat
ing the establishment of commercial relations with the Sublime
Porte. Mr. Folsom gave some reminiscences of this tour at our
own Society meeting, on the announcement of Mr. Bradish s
death in 1863 ; but with his habitual reserve he prepared no
notes of what he had said for our printed Proceedings. And
FOLSOM, SOMERBY, AND SEWARD. 189
the same modest reserve deterred him from giving any account
of his relations to Farragut. But the grand old Admiral s
acknowledgments were uttered with all the frankness and sim
plicity of his noble nature ; and if the facts of the case are not
within the memory of any one present, as I doubt not they are,
and as they ought to be within my own, they will be sure to be
forthcoming in the Memoir of our friend, for which it will be
our duty to provide.
Meantime it will be for others who may follow me to do ampler
justice to his career and character.
In the death of Mr. HORATIO GATES SOMERBY, our Society
has lost a most useful and highly valued Corresponding Member.
With no previous education or preparation for such pursuits, he
was drawn, in mature manhood, by a sort of instinct or elective
affinity, to antiquarian and genealogical researches, and soon
became devoted to them. He made it his specialty to trace the
links between families in New England and those of the same
name or blood in Old England ; and his occasional, and, of late
years, continued residence in London, gave him peculiar facili
ties for the work. Sometimes for mere love, and sometimes for
honorable remuneration, he unravelled the intricacies of not a
few Anglo-American pedigrees ; and proved that more or less of
noble, or, it may have been, of ignoble, blood, from a remote
ancestry, was running in the veins of some who had hardly pre
tended to any pedigree at all. His diligent investigations of
this sort in the old English counties of Suffolk and Essex, from
which so many of our Massachusetts families and founders emi
grated, were well known to the antiquaries of that part of Eng
land, and Mr. Somerby has long been an Honorary Member of
the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology. In that relation, he gained
the cordial regard and friendship of the late President of that
Institute, Lord Arthur Hervey, now Bishop of Bath and Wells,
whose name is also on our roll ; and not many years ago I had
the good fortune to spend a day with him at Ickworth Priory,
of which Lord Arthur was then curate.
Mr. Somerby, too, had early won the confidence and regard of
our illustrious benefactor, the late George Peabody, and was
190 FOLSOM, SOMERBY, AND SEWARD.
appointed by him the Secretary and active agent of that distin
guished Board of Trustees to which was committed the manage
ment of his noble foundation for improving the Lodging Houses
of the Poor of London, a Board of which the Earl of Derby
and our own Mr. Adams, as American Minister, were long mem
bers. There is the best authority for saying that, in this capacity,
Mr. Somerby s services were highly appreciated, not only by the
Trustees, but by the London Poor, with whom he was brought
into frequent communication and contact. The Annual Reports
or Statements of the Board, for the seven years of its existence,
have uniformly borne Mr. Somerby s signature ; and that signa
ture alone can hardly fail to secure an enviable endurance for
his name.
He had been a Corresponding Member of our Society for twelve
or thirteen years, and had occasionally made welcome contribu
tions to our Collections. And not a few of us will cherish a
grateful memory of the obliging readiness with which he re
sponded to our individual inquiries about names and dates and
facts, genealogical and historical, which often cost him long
journeys from London, and laborious investigations into ancient
wills and time-worn parish registers.
He died in London on the 14th of November last, at sixty-
seven years of age, and his remains were interred, only a few
days since, at Newburyport, Massachusetts, his native place.
I turn lastly, gentlemen, to a name of wider celebrity. I
believe that there have been but two instances, in our history
as a Society, where all the prescribed rules relating to the ad
mission of members have been suspended by unanimous consent,
and where names have been placed on our Honorary Roll by a
sort of acclamation.
The first instance occurred at our November meeting, 1861,
when Winfield Scott, after a brilliant military service of nearly
fifty years, was obliged by his age and infirmities to resign his
place as the Commander-in-chief of the Arm}^ of the United
States.
The second instance occurred at the Annual Meeting in April,
1865, when tidings of the deepest horror had so recently reached
FOLSOM, SOMERBY, AND SEWARD. 191
us from Washington. On that occasion, after paying a tribute
to the lamented President, who had fallen a victim to assassina
tion, we placed upon our Honorary Roll the name of the Secre
tary of State who had so narrowly escaped death by the same
base and abhorrent conspiracy.
Mr. SEWARD was not without high claims to a compliment of
this kind, quite apart from the sympathy which was felt for him
at that moment.
As a lawyer who had taken an active part in not a few cele
brated cases ; as Governor of the great State of New York, at a
period when questions of the highest national concern, involving
the immediate issues of peace or war with England, were de
pendent on his acts ; as a Senator of the United States, who had
been the recognized leader of the political party which finally
prevailed throughout what were then called the Free States,
and from whose policy, directly or indirectly, resulted the ren
dering of all States free States, and of all men free men, in
all these relations, he had acquired a name which could not fail
to have a prominent place in the history of his times. He had,
also, already contributed valuable materials to that history, by
arguments in courts, by speeches in Congress, and by various
more extended literary publications.