Theatrum majorum Author:Arthur Gilman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Reverend Thomas Shepard arrives. 5 negative voice. The Court adjourned, and a special day of humiliation, in consequence of the difficulty, was kept throu... more »ghout the Colony. The matter was temporarily settled by the consent of Mr. Hooker's people to remain and to receive grants of land on the south side of the Charles river. They soon, however, became restless again, and, although at the General Court held at Newtown, May 6, 1635, John Haynes, one of their chief men, was elected governor, they resolved, apparently with the tacit consent of the Court, to follow " the strong bent of their spirits," and remove to the Connecticut, whither their neighbors of Dorchester and Watertown were also on the point of emigrating. They accordingly sold their estates to the Rev. Thomas Shepard and his company, who arrived at Boston in the ship Defence, October 3, 1635. This " holy, heavenly, sweet-affecting, and soul- ravishing minister,"1 who had not yet completed his thirtieth year, had been a non-conformist clergyman in Essex County and elsewhere, and, after numerous perils by land and water, had succeeded in escaping from Eng; land, it is said in disguise and under an assumed name. He was accompanied by his stanch friend, the young and wealthy Roger Harlakenden, George Cook, afterwards captain of the Cambridge company, and some sixty others. This company settled at Newtown, and, February I, 1636, organized a church with much solemnity. The following June, Mr. Hooker and his assistant, Mr. Stone, with their congregation of one hundred people, set out on foot through the wilderness for the Connecticut, a distance of one hundred miles, driving their cattle with them; and, after nearly a fortnight's journeying, reached their destination and founded a second Newtown, the modern Hartford. ...« less