sciences, in Harvard College, in Cambridge in the county of Middlesex, and to the maintenance of the President and Fellows, and for all accommodations of buildings, and all other necessary provisions, that may conduce to the education of the English and Indian youth of this country, in knowledge and godliness.

It is therefore ordered and enacted by this Court, and the authority thereof, that for the furthering of so good a work, and for the purposes aforesaid, from henceforth, that the said College, in Cambridge in Middlesex, in New England, shall be a Corporation, consisting of seven persons, to wit: a President, five Fellows, and a Treasurer or Bursar; and that Henry Dunster shall be the first President; Samuel Mather, Samuel Danforth, Masters of Art, Jonathan Mitchell, Comfort Starr, and Samuel Eaton, Bachelors of Art, shall be the five Fellows and Thomas Danforth to be present Treasurer, all of them being inhabitants in the Bay, and shall be the first seven persons of which the said Corporation shall consist; and that the said seven persons, or the greater number of them, procuring the presence of the Overseers of the College, and by their counsel and consent, shall have power, and are hereby authorized, at any time, or times, to clect a new President, Fellows, or Treasurer, so oft, and from time to time, as any of the said persons shall die, or be removed; which said President and Fellows, for the time being, shall for ever hereafter, in name and fact, be one body politic and corporate in law, to all intents and purposes; and shall have perpetual succession; and shall be called by the name of President and Fellows of Harvard College, and shall, from time to time, be eligible as aforesaid, and by that name they, and their successors, shall and may purchase and acquire to themselves, or take and receive upon free gift and donation, any lands, tenements, or hereditaments, within this jurisdiction of the Massachusetts, not exceeding five hundred pounds per annum, and any goods and sums of money whatsoever, to the use and behoof of the said President, Fellows, and scholars of the said College; and also may sue and plead, or be sued and impleaded by the name aforesaid, in all Courts and places of judicature, within the jurisdiction aforesaid.

And that the said President, with any three of the Fellows, shall have power, and are hereby authorized, when they shall think fit, to make and appoint a common seal for the use of the said Corporation. And the President and Fellows, or major part of them, from time to time, may meet and choose such officers and servants for the College, and make such allowance to them, and them also to remove, and after death, or removal, to choose such others, and to make, from time to time, such orders and by-laws, for the better ordering, and carrying on the work of the College, as they shall think fit; provided, the said orders be allowed by the Overseers. And also, that the President and Fellows, or major part of them with the Treasurer, shall have power to make conclusive bargains for lands and tenements, to be purchased by the said Corporation, for valuable consideration.

And for the better ordering of the government of the said College and Corporation, Be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the President, and three more of the Fellows, shall and may, from time to time, upon due warning or notice given by the President to the rest, hold a meeting, for the debating and concluding of affairs concerning the profits and revenues of any lands, and disposing of their goods (provided that all the said disposings be according to the will of the donors); and for direction in all emergent occasions; execution of all orders and by-laws; and for the procuring of a general meeting of all the Overseers and Society, in great and difficult cases; and in case of non-agreement; in all which cases aforesaid, the conclusion shall be made by the major part, the said President having a casting voice, the Overseers consenting thereunto; and that all the aforesaid transactions shall tend to and for the use and behoof of the President, Fellows, scholars, and officers of the said College, and for all accommodations of buildings, books, and all other necessary provisions and furnitures, as may be for the advancement and education of youth, in all manner of good literature, arts, and sciences. And further, be it ordered by this Court, and the authority thereof, that all the lands, tenements, and hereditaments, houses, or revenues, within this jurisdiction, to the aforesaid President or College appertaining, not exceeding the value of five hundred pounds per annum, shall, from henceforth, be freed from all civil impositions, taxes, and rates; all goods to the said Corporation, or to any scholars thereof appertaining, shall be exempted from all manner of toll, customs, and exercise whatsoever. And that the said President, Fellows, and scholars together with the servants, and other necessary officers to the said President, or

College appertaining, not exceeding ten, viz., three to the President, and seven to the College Felonging, shall be exempted from all personal civil offices, military exercises, or services, watchings, and wardings; and such of their estates, not exceeding one hundred pounds a man, shall be free from all country taxes or rates whatsoever, and no other.

In witness whereof, the Court hath caused the seal of the colony to be hereunto affixed. Dated the one and thirtieth day of the third month, called May, anno 1650.

[L. B.]

1654-1672.

THOMAS DUDLEY, Governor.*

After the resignation of President Dunster, John Amos Commenius, of Moravia, received, through the younger Winthrop, overtures to accept the office, but he was induced to bestow his educational labors in Sweden and Transylvania.

On the 2d of November, 1654, the Rev. Charles Chauncy, then on his way from Scituate, in Plymouth County, where he had been a minister for twelve years, to England, with a view of being reinstated in his former parish of Ware, was chosen President. He was born in Hertfordshire in 1589. Was educated at Westminster School and in Trinity College, Cambridge, in which he was afterwards Professor of Hebrew and of Greek, until he was settled over a parish in Ware. Here he became involved in the ecclesiastical troubles "for opposing the making of a rail about the communion table," for which he was finally silenced and suspended by Archbishop Laud, and in consequence betook himself to the colony of Plymouth in 1638. He was sixty-four years old when he took charge of the college, and his presidency was prolonged till death, February 19, 1672, in his eightysecond year. He was an indefatigable student, rising every morning at four o'clock the year round. It was his practice to devote between three and four hours every day to private devotion, and sometimes he spent whole nights in prayer. The church at Cambridge, of which

* A copy of the original, engrossed on parchment, under the signature of Governor Dud. ley, with the colony seal appendant, is in the custody of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

+ Dr. Cotton Mather, in “Magnalia," folio. London, 1702, Book IV., p. 128, after stating Dunster's resignation, says :

"That brave Old Man, Johannes Amos COMMENIUS, the Fame of whose Worth hath been Trumpetted as far as more than three Languages (whereof every one is Endebted unto his Janua) could carry it was indeed agreed withall, by our Mr. Winthrop in his Travels through the Low Countries, to come over into New England, and Illuminate this Colledge and Coun try, in the Quality of a President: But the Solicitations of the Swedish Ambassador, diverting him another way, that Incomparable Moravian became not an American."

Commenius was invited to visit England in 1641, to organize a system of public instruction for the Commonwealth. He visited London in that year, but the disturbances in Ireland so hindered his plans, that he abandoned that field and accepted a similar task in Sweden, where he had the countenance of Chancellor Oxenstiern and the aid of the Swedish Government. Had Commenius made either Old or New England his permanent residence, it is not too much to suppose that his publications and earnest personal efforts would have introduced the same educational reform which he inaugurated in Germany. See Memoir in Barnard's "American Journal of Education," Vol. V., p. 257-298.

he was pastor, after he had been with them a year or twe, kept an entire day of thanksgiving to God for the mercy of enjoying such a preacher. Dr. Cotton Mather states: "The Fellows of the college once leading this venerable old man to preach a sermon on a winter day, they, out of affection to him, to discourage him from so difficult an undertaking, told him, 'Sir, you'll certainly die in the pulpit;' but he, laying hold on what they said, as if they had offered the greatest encouragement in the world, pressed the more vigorously through the snow-drift, and said, 'How glad should I be, if what you say might prove true.'"

During the term of office of "this venerable old man "the only Indian, who ever passed through the four years of college life, took his degree. Several were induced to attempt the civilizing process of a learned education; and at one time, the "Society for Propagating the Gospel in New England and the Parts Adjacent," erected a hall for their accommodation, at a cost of between £300 and £400. The effort was soon given up, however, as the Indian constitution was found incompatible with those habits which are requisite for literary attainments. Even Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, as this solitary Indian graduate was euphoniously called, soon died of consumption. The building erected for the special accommodation of the natives was, therefore, appropriated to other purposes, and for some time was used as a printing office, which gained great renown in its day.

About one half of the graduates under President Chauncy became ministers of the gospel, and several others held posts of distinction in civil life. Two were Chief Justices of the Colony; one was afterwards Chief Justice of the colony of New York, and successively Governor of Massachusetts and of New Hampshire; and three became presidents of colleges, viz: two of Harvard, and one of Yale.

The donations to the college, at this period, were numerous and interesting;* indicating, in various ways, the state of the colony in respect to its resources, the affectionate regard of the community, and the liberality of many persons in England, as well as here, toward this school in the wilderness. Two of the most considerable, which have remained available to the present day, are the bequest of Edward Hopkins, of £500,† and the annuity of William Pennoyer, which, at the time, was £34 per annum, and is now about £50. Both of these were for the benefit of the indigent; the former to be used for educating boys at the grammar school of the town of Cambridge, as well as young men at the college, and the latter for this purpose only.

*See APPENDIX-Donations, 1654 to 1572.

↑ See Barnard's “American Journal of Education,” Vol. IV.. 669.

During the latter part of President Chauncy's administration, both the College and the Colony were involved in, pecuniary embarrassments. The buildings of the seminary were "ruinous and almost irreparable," and "the number of scholars short of what they had been in former days." All its efficient funds did not amount to one thousand pounds, and without a new building its situation was desperate. The General Court could, or would do nothing. In this emergency, the town of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, in an address to the General Court in 1669, after expressing their thankfulness for the protection extended to them by Massachusetts, and saying, "that, although they had articled with them for exemption from taxes, yet they had never articled with God and their own consciences for exemption from gratitude," which "while they were studying how to demonstrate, the loud groans of the sinking college came to their ears; and hoping that their example might provoke the rest of the country to an holy emulation in so good a work, and the General Court itself vigorously to act, for the diverting the omen of calamity, which its destruction would be to New England," declare, that a voluntary collection had been made among their inhabitants, which authorized the town to pledge the payment of "sixty pounds sterling a year for seven years ensuing; to be improved by the Overseers of the College for the advancement of good literature there."

This noble example was not lost on Massachusetts. Efficient measures were immediately adopted for raising subscriptions in the Colony, and an agent was despatched to England to solicit aid from its friends there, with letters and an urgent address to them from the overseers. These exertions produced, in the course of the ensuing year, subscriptions for more than two thousand six hundred pounds. Under this encouragement, in 1672, authority was given for the commencement of a new edifice. Subscriptions, however, were more easily made, than collected. Great delays and delinquencies occurred. The General Court were compelled to interfere; and, after efforts for five or six years, first by urging, then by threatening, and at last, by actually authorizing the delinquent subscriptions to, be collected by distress, they finally succeeded in completing the erection of a new college, in 1682, ten years after it had been commenced.

1672-1684.

President Chauncy was succeeded in office by Leonard Hoar, who belonged to the medical as well as to the clerical profession. He was educated at Harvard, but returned to England to become minister at Wanstead, in Essex. He was inducted into the presidency in July,

1672, and resigned in March, 1675, after a troubled administrationboth with the corporation and the students-the latter, according to Cotton Mather, used to "turn cudweeds and travestic whatever he did and said, with a design to make him odious," a design in which they succeeded much to the discredit of the Puritan youths. The General Court became early mixed up "in the motions and debates," and a second year had not passed, before the General Court summoned into their presence the corporation, overseers, president, and students; and, after a full hearing, notwithstanding that Dr. Hoar, in consideration of the poverty of the students, voluntarily relinquished fifty pounds of his annual salary, the Court passed this most extraordinary vote; "That, if the college be found in the same languishing condition at the next session, the president is concluded to be dismissed without further hearing." After this decisive encouragement to malcontents, it was not difficult to anticipate the result. The college continued to languish, and Dr. Hoar resigned his office in the March ensuing.

The Rev. Urian Oakes, the minister of Cambridge, was his successor, as president pro tempore, retaining his position as pastor of the church. He, too, was born in England, but, coming over in childhood, he was educated at Harvard College, and then went to England, where he was regularly settled; and, having returned to this country, with so many others of the non-conformists, he became, in the first place, minister of Cambridge, and then president of the college. He officiated, for five years, as a merely temporary occupant of the chair, and was not formally installed till February, 1680. He is believed to have countenanced those who expressed their dissatisfaction with his predecessor; and he certainly resigned his seat in the Corporation within a year after Hoar's appointment. The most reasonable, as well as the most charitable, construction of his conduct is, that the complaints against the late president were not without some just foundation; for Oakes has left behind him the reputation of having been "a man of bright parts, extensive learning, and exalted piety "a reputation clearly inconsistent with any factious conduct, or personal jealousy. He died in July, 1681, and was succeeded by his classmate, John Rogers, a graduate of 1649.

This gentleman was the son of the Rev. Nathaniel Rogers, of Ipswich; and had applied himself first to the study of theology, and afterwards to that of medicine. He continued in office for two years only, highly esteemed for his abilities and acquisitions, and greatly loved for the amiableness of his temper. He was the first layman who held the office of president of the college.

(To be continued.)