Transcript:Savage, James. Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England/v4p568

Winthrop's Hist. we kn. he had been a minister. The exhibition obtain. in
the London Inst. 9 July 1624, seems to disprove his identi. with the stud.
ent. at Jesus Coll. Oxford in Apr. preced. and my ignorance of the rules
and customs of the Charter Ho. forbids me to speak with confidence.
To write his life and illustrate his charact. has long been felt as a duty by
the scholars of the beautiful city he found. and after serv. attempts more
may be said. Professor Elton, wh. serv. yrs. since publish his biogr. has
had means of discover. how he had been deceiv. as to the b. and educ. of
the amiable hero; and we hope for ano. ed. of his vol. If at either of
the Eng. Univ. he was educ. wh. seems very uncert. to me. Cambridge is
entitl. to the honor, rather than Oxford. He came from Bristol, 1 Dec.
1630, in the Lion, and reach. Boston 9 Feb. foll. with w. Mary; and in
few wks. during wh. he was desir. to settle in the ch. of Boston, by
their unanimous choice, in the spring. of 1631, as he tells, in a letter
(most characteristic of the writer, equal in value to any one in a thousand
of our New Eng. epistles) to Rev. John Cotton of Plymouth,
print. in Mass. Hist. Transactions of the Soc. 1855-08 pp. 313-6, but
his tender conscience did not dare to officate to "an unseparated peopple."
This statement of Williams I accept without hesitat. tho. in a
note on p. 406 of Vol. I. of Hist. of N. E. by Prof. Palfrey, whose eye
had been blessed with the orig. MS. a doubt might have pass. thro. his
mind to extort the remark: "it is very extraordin. that the fact is not
ment. in any record of the time." But no contempo. rec. exc. that of
the Col. would possib. contain it, for no other is in exist. our earliest
rec. of Boston civil affairs begins abrupt. in the middle of a sentence,
Sept. 1634, preced, pages being lost, yet that is four or five yrs. bef. we
have an orig. ecclesiastic. rec. of any thing exc. bapt. Even the name
of Williams, our gr. reformer, is FIRST read in Col. Rec. Sept. 1635,
being that of his banishm. Vol. I. 160; as ea. of the sev. prior read.
of Roger Williams manifest. refers to the Dorchester man. But quite
concur. with the sense and even phrase of that let. to Cotton is the lang.
of Winthrop Hist. I. 53 in the order of Court, recit. that he "had refused
to join with the congregat. [i. e. church] at Boston, because they would
not make a pub. declarat. of their repent. for hav. commun. with the
chhs. of Eng." &c. That order was in Apr. 1631, less than a fortnight
after Boston ch. was left without a min. by Wilson's depart. for home,
and two and a half yrs. bef. com. of Cotton's father. Assuredly he was
not likely to refuse before he was asked. He next went to be assoc.
with Skelton at Salem, in teach. that congreg. but was more wanted at
Plymouth, in the autumn of that yr. and contin. good pt,. of two yrs. to
minister here; hardly had he got back to Salem, where the people
wish. him as successor of Skelton, bef. his overscrupul. conscience made