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hist. says nothing like it. Into such carelessness Hutch. does not oft.
fall. Hubbard, wh. m. the only d. of this Nathaniel, clearly eno. calls
him s. of Rev. John of Dedham, wh. he honarab. marks as the famous
preach. as if "it might be honor eno. to say" of Nathaniel, "that he was
the s. of Mr. John," "yet heir of a double portion of his spirit, and worthy
to have transmit. more honor to his posterity than he received from those
bef. him by reason of his emin. learning, singular piety, holy zeal, with
other ministerial abilities." See Hubbard, 554. Surely the hist. could
not intend a slur upon the learning, piety, holy zeal, or minist. abilities
of him wh. glorified his master in the martyr's fire; and the irresistib.
inference is, that he, tho. so intimately related to Nathaniel, had never
heard of his descent from the protomartyr of Queen Mary. Tho. he is
wholly silent as to John's progenit. hardly can it seem possible that our
Ispwich Hist. should not have stated the propagat. of the martyr's seed
on our side of the water, when hims. m. (as idly report.) a gr.d. and his
sis. (both nam. Margaret), m. Ezekiel, a gr.s. It would have been
equally sure to be ment. by him, if these two ms. had been of the fourth
or fifth generat. no less than of the third as assert. Neither Johnson,
who expends verse upon both of the min. of Ipswich and Rowley, then
liv. nor the more judicious and equally affectionate contempor. annalist,
Gov. Winth, nor garrulous Mather in his Magn. all-gathering, especial.
of doubtful reports, nor Ch. J. Sewall, jealous for the honor of
puritans, nor Prince, the pattern of accuracy in minute detail, hint at
any such glorious ancest. more than Hubbard. I presume the tradit. has
no older origin. that Hutchinson's day; and perhaps he got it, as may
have also Dr. Eliot, from their common friend, Rev. Daniel of Littleton,
whose f. Daniel was perhaps so nam. out of rever. to Maj.-Gen. Daniel
Dennison, f. of this mo. whose only d. she was, rather than of Daniel, s.
of the martyr of Smithfield, whose memory puritans would gladly forget,
as he was a courtier, and did not keep the godly simplicity of the sufferer.
My admirable friend, the late Dr. Eliot, who in his Biog. Dict.
gave currency to the tradit. as if it were authentic, had assist. he tells us,
the Rev. Daniel, some mos. in his pulpit; and the gr.st. at L. over the
clerg. that d. Nov. 1782, shows now the sleeper there accept. the honor,
But the four generat. of silence on our side of the ocean, add. to the prior
eighty yrs. stillness of the mother country, forbid me to entertain any
respect for the report first heard in the fifth age of our own history. All
the evidence is indeed of a negative charact. but so many facts are ascertain.
quite inconsist. with the assumpt. founded on the mod. tradit. that it
seems a far safer conclus, maybe dr. than if half a dozen pieces of positive
testim . were laid for its substratum. From the silence of Giles Firmin,
wh. had liv. at our Ipswich under the preaching of Nathaniel Rogers, and
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