Delphi Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Illustrated) (843 page)

But if other reason were wanted to account for his dwelling on the shadows and severities of the Puritans so intently, it might be found in his family history and its aspects to his brooding mind. His own genealogy was the gate which most nearly conducted him into the still and haunted fields of time which those brave but stern religious exiles peopled.

The head of the American branch of the Hathorne, or Hawthorne family, was Major William Hathorne, of Wigcastle, Wilton, Wiltshire, [Footnote: This name appears in the American Note-Books (August 22, 1837) as Wigcastle, Wigton. I cannot find any but the Scotch Wigton, and have substituted the Wilton of Wiltshire as being more probable. Memorials of the family exist in the adjoining county of Somerset. (
A. N. B.
, October, 1836.)] in England, a younger son, who came to America with Winthrop and his company, by the Arbella, arriving in Salem Bay June 12, 1630. He probably went first to Dorchester, having grants of land there, and was made a freeman about 1634, and representative, or one of “the ten men,” in 1635. Although a man of note, his name is not affixed to the address sent by Governor Winthrop and several others from Yarmouth, before sailing, to their brethren in the English Church; but this is easily accounted for by the fact that Hathorne was a determined Separatist, while the major part of his fellow-pilgrims still clung to Episcopacy. In 1636, Salem tendered him grants of land if he would remove hither, considering that “it was a public benefit that he should become an inhabitant of that town.” He removed accordingly, and, in 1638, he had additional lands granted to him “in consideration of his many employments for towne and countrie.” Some of these lands were situated on a pleasant rising ground by the South River, then held to be the most desirable part of the town; and a street running through that portion bears the name of Hathorne to this day. In 1645, he petitioned the General Court that he might be allowed, with others, to form a “company of adventurers” for trading among the French; and in the same year he was appointed captain of a military company, the first regular troop organized in Salem to “advance the military art.” From 1636 to 1643 he had been a representative of the people, from Dorchester and Salem; and from 1662 to 1679 he filled the higher office of an assistant. It was in 1667 that he was empowered to receive for the town a tax of twenty pounds of powder per ton for every foreign vessel over twenty tons trading to Salem and Marblehead, thus forestalling his famous descendant in sitting at the receipt of customs. Besides these various activities, he officiated frequently as an attorney at law; and in the Indian campaign of 1676, in Maine, he left no doubt of his efficiency as a military commander. He led a portion of the army of twelve hundred men which the colony had raised, and in September of this year he surprised four hundred Indians at Cocheco. Two hundred of these “were found to have been perfidious,” and were sent to Boston, to be sold as slaves, after seven or eight had been put to death. A couple of weeks later, Captain Hathorne sent a despatch: “We catched an Indian Sagamore of Pegwackick and the gun of another; we found him in many lies, and so ordered him to be put to death, and the Cocheco Indians to be his executioners.” There was some reason for this severity, for in crossing a river the English had been ambuscaded by the savages. The captain adds: “We have no bread these three days.” This early ancestor was always prominent. He had been one of a committee in 1661, who reported concerning the “patent, laws, and privileges and duties to his Majesty” of the colonists, opposing all appeals to the crown as inconsistent with their charter, and maintained the right of their government to defend itself against all attempts at overthrow. Two years later he was charged by Charles's commissioners with seditious words, and apologized for certain “unadvised” expressions; but the committee of 1661 reported at a critical time, and it needed a good deal of stout-heartedness to make the declarations which it did; and on the whole William Hathorne may stand as a sturdy member of the community. He is perhaps the only man of the time who has left a special reputation for eloquence. Eliot speaks of him as “the most eloquent man of the Assembly, a friend of Winthrop, but often opposed to Endicott, who glided with the popular stream; as reputable for his piety as for his political integrity.” And Johnson, in his “Wonder-Working Providence,” naming the chief props of the state, says: “Yet through the Lord's mercy we still retain among our Democracy the godly Captaine William Hathorn, whom the Lord hath indued with a quick apprehension, strong memory, and Rhetorick, volubility of speech, which hath caused the people to make use of him often in Publick Service, especially when they have had to do with any foreign government.” It is instructive to find what ground he took during the Quaker persecutions of 1657 to 1662. Endicott was a forward figure in that long-sustained horror; and if Hathorne naturally gravitated to the other extreme from Endicott, he would be likely, one supposes, to have sympathized with the persecuted. The state was divided in sentiment during those years; but James Cudworth wrote that “he that will not whip and lash, persecute, and punish men that differ in matters of religion, must not sit on the bench nor sustain any office in the commonwealth.” Cudworth himself was deposed; and it happens that Hathorne's terms of service, as recorded, seem at first to leave a gap barely wide enough to include this troublesome period. But, in fact, he resumed power as a magistrate just in time to add at least one to the copious list of bloody and distinguishing atrocities that so disfigure New England history.

Sewel relates [Footnote: History of the Quakers, I. 411, 412.] that “Anne Coleman and four of her friends were whipped through Salem, Boston, and Dedham by order of Wm. Hawthorn, who before he was a magistrate had opposed compulsion for conscience; and when under the government of Cromwell it was proposed to make a law that none shall preach without license, he publicly said at Salem that if ever such a law took place in New England he should look upon it as one of the most abominable actions that were ever committed there, and that it would be as eminent a Token of God's having forsaken New England, as any could be.” His famous descendant, alluding to this passage, [Footnote: See “The Custom House,” introductory to “The Scarlet Letter.”] says that the account of this incident “will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, though these were many.” Yet it should not be overlooked that Hathorne is the only one among the New England persecutors whom Sewel presents to us with any qualifying remark as to a previous more humane temper. Sole, too, in escaping the doom of sudden death which the historian solemnly records in the cases of the rest. So that even if we had not the eminent example of Marcus Aurelius and Sir Thomas More, we might still infer from this that it is no less possible for the man of enlightened ability and culture, than for the ignorant bigot, to find himself, almost of necessity, a chief instrument of religious coercion. Doubtless this energetic Puritan denouncer of persecution never conceived of a fanaticism like that of the Friends, which should so systematically outrage all his deepest sense of decency, order, and piety, and — not content with banishment — should lead its subjects to return and force their deaths, as it were, on the commonwealth; as if a neighbor, under some mistaken zeal, were to repeatedly mix poison with our porridge, until his arrest and death should seem our only defence against murder. Perhaps he was even on the dissenting side, for a time, though there is no record of his saying, like one Edward Wharton of Salem, that the blood of the Quakers was too heavy upon him, and he could not bear it. Wharton received twenty lashes for his sensitiveness, and was fined twenty pounds, and subjected to more torture afterward. But, whatever Hathorne's first feeling, after five years of disturbance, exasperation was added to the responsibility of taking office, and he persecuted. It is easy to see his various justifications, now; yet one cannot wonder that his descendant was oppressed by the act. That he was so cannot be regretted, if only because of the authentic fact that his reading of Sewel inspired one of his most exquisite tales, “The Gentle Boy.”

William Hathorne, however, — whatever his taste in persecution, — makes his will peacefully and piously in 1679-80: “
Imprimis
, I give my soul into the hands of Jesus Christ, in whom I hope to bind forevermore my body to the earth in hope of a glorious resurrection with him, whom this vile body shall be made like unto his glorious body; and for the estate God hath given me in this world…. I do dispose of as followeth.” Then he bequeaths various sums of money to divers persons, followed by “all my housing and land, orchard and appurtenances lying in Salem,” to his son John. Among other items, there is one devising his “farm at Groton” to “Gervice Holwyse my gr. ch. [grandchild] if he can come over and enjoy it.” Here, by the way, is another bit of coincidence for the curious.
Gervase Helwyse
is the name of the young man who appears in “Lady Eleanor's Mantle,” [Footnote: Twice-Told Tales, Vol. II.] bereft of reason by his love for the proud and fatal heroine of that tale. [Footnote: In the English Note-Books, May 20, 1854, will be found some facts connected with this name, unearthed by Mr. Hawthorne himself. He there tells of the marriage of one
Gervase Elwes
, son of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet of Stoke, in Suffolk. This Gervase died before his father; his son died without issue; and thus John Maggott Twining, grandson of the second Gervase through a daughter, came into the baronetcy. This Twining assumed the name of Elwes. “He was the famous miser, and must have had Hawthorne blood in him,” says Mr. Hawthorne, “through his grandfather Gervase, whose mother was a Hawthorne.” He then refers to William's devise, and says: “My ancestor calls him his
nephew
.” The will says, “gr. ch.”; and I suppose the mistake occurred through Mr. Hawthorne's not having that document at hand, for reference.] Captain Hathorne must have been well advanced in years when he led his troops against the Indians at Cocheco in 1676; for it was only five years later that he disappeared from history and from this life forever.

His son John inherited, together with housing and land, a good deal of the first Hathorne's various energy and eminence. He was a freeman in 1677, representative from 1683 to 1686, and assistant or counsellor, from 1684 to 1712, except the years of Andros's government. After the deposition of Andros, he was called to join Bradstreet's Council of Safety pending the accession of William of Orange; a magistrate for some years; quartermaster of the Essex companies at first, and afterward, in 1696, the commander of Church's troops, whom he led against St. John. He attacked the enemy's fort there, but, finding his force too weak, drew off, and embarked for Boston. As his father's captaincy had somehow developed into the dignity of major, so John found himself a colonel in 1711. But in 1717 he, too, died. And now there came a change in the fortunes of the Hathorne line. Colonel John, during his magistracy, had presided at the witchcraft trials, and had shown himself severe, bigoted, and unrelenting in his spirit toward the accused persons. Something of this may be seen in Upham's volumes. One woman was brought before him, whose husband has left a pathetic record of her suffering. “She was forced to stand with her arms stretched out. I requested that I might hold one of her hands, but it was declined me; then she desired me to wipe the tears from her eyes, and the sweat from her face, which I did; then she desired that she might lean herself on me, saying she should faint. Justice Hathorne replied she had strength enough to torment these persons, and she should have strength enough to stand. I repeating something against their cruel proceedings, they commanded me to be silent, or else I should be turned out of the room.” [Footnote: Chandler's American Criminal Trials, I. p. 85.] It is not strange that this husband should have exclaimed, that God would take revenge upon his wife's persecutors; and perhaps he was the very man whose curse was said to have fallen upon the justice's posterity.

From this time, at all events, the family lost its commanding position in Salem affairs. Justice Hathorne's son Joseph subsided into the quiet of farm-life. The only notable association with his name is, that he married Sarah Bowditch, a sister of the grandfather of the distinguished mathematician, Nathaniel Bowditch. But it is in the beginning of the eighteenth century that the Hathornes begin to appear as mariners. In the very year of the justice's death, one Captain Ebenezer Hathorne earned the gloomy celebrity attendant on bringing small-pox to Salem, in his brig just arrived from the Barbadoes. Possibly, Justice John may have died from this very infection; and if so, the curse would seem to have worked with a peculiarly malign appropriateness, by making a member of his own family the unwilling instrument of his end. By and by a Captain Benjamin Hathorne is cast away and drowned on the coast, with four other men. Perhaps it was his son, another Benjamin, who, in 1782, being one of the crew of an American privateer, “The Chase,” captured by the British, escaped from a prison-ship in the harbor of Charleston, S. C., with six comrades, one of whom was drowned. Thus, gradually, originated the traditional career of the men of this family, — ”a gray-headed shipmaster in each generation,” as the often-quoted passage puts it, “retiring from the quarter-deck to the homestead, while a boy of fourteen took the hereditary place before the mast.” But the most eminent among these hardy skippers is Daniel, the son of farmer Joseph, and grandfather of the author.

Daniel Hathorne lived to be eighty-five, and expired only on April 18, 1796, eight years and a little more before his famous grandson came into the world. Something of the old prowess revived in him, and being a stout seafarer, and by inheritance a lover of independence, he became commander of a privateer during our Revolution; indeed, it is said he commanded several. His guns have made no great noise in history, but their reverberation has left in the air a general tradition of his bravery. The only actual account of his achievements which I have met with is the following ballad, written by the surgeon of his ship, who was perhaps better able than any one else to gauge the valor of his countryman and commander, by the amount of bloodshed on his piratical craft: —