In 1654 "it is ordered that the ten pounds left by legacy to ye schoole of Boston by Mis Hudson deceased, shall be lett to Capt. James Olliver

31st 9th mo. 1649. Accordinge to order of the Towne in Generall, whoe gave power to the select men of the towne to sell the Reversion of the Dock or Cove Called by the name of Bendall's Docke, the Selectmen of the Towne have sold the Reverssion

.....

to James Evirill, ever painge to the Schoole use sixe pounds sixteen shillings ten pence p. Annum for ever, etc. See Suffolk Deeds i. 114; also Ibid ii. 259.

31:1: 1656. The peece of land formerly granted to Edward Greenliff by the spring is lett to Matthew Coy, from yeare to yeere while the town pleases, for two shillings, sixe pence, per yeare for the schooles use.

23: 12:56. There is lett to Capt. James Johnson all the wast land belonging to the towne on the southside of the Creeke by Mr. Winthrop's warehouse and adjoyning to the land already lett to Ben Ward, to enjoy the same for ever, hee paying foure pounds, ten shillings per annum for ever to the schoole of Boston, alwayes reserving highways through the same land for the townes use, and the said land to be bounded on all parts and to be specifyed in covenants expressly, and the land to bee bound for security of payment, which is to bee paid every first of the first mo. and to begin the first March, 57, on forfeiture.

The following votes of the Town, passed some fifty years later, are of the same tenor, and may be included with those just given :

On the 13th of March, 1711, at a meeting continued by adjournment from the day before, it was

Voted, That the Present Selectmen, vizt Addington Davenport, Esqr, Mesurs Isaiah Tay, Daniel Oliver, Thomas Cushing, Dr. Oliver Noyes, Joseph Wadsworth, and Edwd Hutchinson, or any five of them, be a Comittee to Sell the Towne's Lands in Braintree, and that they have full power to sign & execute Deeds for ye same, & yt they Lay out ye sd money in Some Real Estate for the use of the Publick Latin School,* that ye stock be not exhausted Provided ye Town be advised wth before ye money be disposed of.

At a Meeting of the Free holders and other Inhabitts of the Town of Boston, duly qualified and warned Accordingly to Law being Convened at the Town House the 9th of May 1711.

*

Voted, That the Sume of the Thirteen hundred pounds, part of the purchas money for the Towns Land in Brantrey, Sold to Menassah Tucker &c., of Milton, by ye present Select men appointed and impowered a comittee for that purpose, to be paid by Several payments into ye Town Treasury, according to the Tenor of the conditions of Certain Bonds or writeings Obligatory by them passed to Joseph Prout, Gent., present Town Treasur or his Successor in that Office (Together with the Two hundred pounds already received towards the Sd purchace) Be Invested and Layd out in some Real Estate for the use of the Publick Lattin School, by the aforesaid Comittee of the present Select men, or any five of ym, pursuant to the Towns Vote of the 13th of March past, or by such other Comittee as the Town may hereafter raise and substitute for that service.

The aforesaid money when in the Treasury, to be drawn forth by order of the Comittee, and by them invested and Layd out As aforesaid, Provided the Town be advised with before the disposal thereof, the Annual Rent and Incomes of such Investiture to be imployed to and for the support of the Publick Grammar School the principall stock not to be diminished.

*

Voted, That the proposall made by the Honble Samll Sewall, Esqr for Sale of a parcell of Land for enlarging ye North burying place, at the price of One Hundred and Twenty pounds, to abate Seventy pounds of the Said purchase money, So that ye Town please to

*This is the first time the name of Publick Latin School appears in the Records.

for sixteen shillings per annum so long as he pleases to improve itt," etc.* Orders were also taken for collecting rents on "Deare Island, Long Island, and Spectacle Island, due to the use of ye Schoole," and the renters were required to appear yearly and transact this concern.† The first-named Island was leased in 1662 to Sir Thos. Temple, knight and Barronight," as the scribe of the day quaintly spells it, for thirty-one years, at £14 per an. "to be paid yearely every first day of March to the Town Treasurer for the use of the free schoole." ‡

About four years after this, however, a release of several rents for the Islands and other lands was made, the support of the School arising, doubtless, in great measure from other funds.

Release an Annual Quit claim of Forty Shillings. Issuing out of a Ceader Swamp in his possession, Scituate in Brooklyne, appropriated to the use of the Grammar School Reported by the Committee. Be accepted. And that the said Quit Rent of Forty Shillings p.

Annum be abated.

The afore said Sume of Seventy Pounds to be drawn out of of the Town Treasury, and Invested in some Real Estate, or otherwise improved by the direction of ye Select men for the time being, The yearly Rent or Profit thereof to be appropriated to the use of the Free Grammar School, in lieu of the afore said Quit Rent.

* The 12th : 1 mo: 54-55. It is ordered that the ten pounds left by legacy to the use of the schoole of Boston by mis Hudson, deceased, shall be, lett to Capt. James Olliver for sixteen shillings per annum, so long as he, pleases to improve itt, the which he is to pay in wheate, pease and Indian to the Townes Treasurer every first of the 1 mo., beginning in March 54-55, and upon his delivery of the principall to the Townes Treasurer, itt shall bee paid in corne as aforementioned.

+25: 4:55. . . . . Whereas a considerable part of the rent due to the use of the schoole for Long Island and Spectacle Iland is nott brought in by the renters of the land according to the contract with the towne, Itt is therefore ordered that the present renters shall within ten days after the date hereof come in and cleare their severall payments due for the said land, to the towne's treasurer upon the forfeiture of the said lands as by former agreement, to bee entered upon by the said treasurer by warrant under his hand to the Constable.

23. 12. 62. John Shaw having assigned his lease of Deere Island to Sr. Thom. Temple, Knight & Barronight, who desireth to renew the sd lease which is granted to hime, viz. the said Island is graunted to the said Sr Thomas Temple Knight and Barronight, for himselfe, his heayres and assignes from the 1st of March next ensuing the date hereof for the terme of 31 yeares after the first of March next, att £14 rent to be payed yearly every first day of March to the Towne Treasuerer, for the vse of the Free Schoole, during which time hee is not to fell any Timber, save what shall bee for Buildinge, fenceing, and fire wood on the said Island, and att the end of the sd tearme to yeald vpp the said Island with all buildinges, fenceings &c that shall be upon the sd Island when the said tearme of 31 yeares is expired.

28.7.63. * • Wheareas in the lease graunted Sr Thomas Temple for Deere Iland, 23:12: 1662, he is not to cutt Timber except for buildinge, &c. Itt is now further graunted to hime to cleare the Swamp on the sd Island of all timber trees whatever and alsoe what other wood is vpon the said Iland excepting some Timber Trees.

March 9th, 1684-5. Vpon a Motion of Mr. Ezechiell Cheever Schoolmaster that the lease of Deare Island may be renewed to Mr. Samll Shrimpton the present Tenant, It was voted and referred to the Selectmen to agree with said Mr. Shrimpton or any other about a longer lease or renewinge the former.

The esteem in which the School has been held by the citizens of Boston is shown by the fact that fathers who have been its pupils have sent their sons to share its privileges and secure its benefits, and a perusal of the catalogue will show that many families have had representatives in successive generations upon its rolls, and that today the sons and the grandsons of pupils of the past may be found among its members.

The Latin School has always been a democratic institution. Its privileges have been confined to no class. The minister's and the tallow-chandler's sons have sat side by side on its forms, and engaged in friendly rivalry in school-room and on play-ground, and equally enjoyed its privileges. In his speech as Chairman of the dinner of the Latin School Association in 1879, Rev. James Freeman Clarke,

D.D., says: "In my division there were ten or twelve boys, repre

senting nearly every class of society in the city-the son of Harrison Gray Otis (who was then considered the most aristocratic person in the city), and the son of Marshal Prince; and with them were boys who were children of the humblest residents. They were all together on one level; no one was thought better than another except as he was a better fellow or a brighter student." Its honors have been given for merit, and all its pupils have had the same chance to gain them. And as the result of its training the School had "a boy who could fly a kite better than any Japanese, a boy whose signature upheld the United States for two months, a boy who represented this country at the Court of St. James at a most trying time, and a boy who was the greatest of the arbiters at Geneva."

Her first masters might have seen Shakspeare act in his own plays; and, perhaps, whiled away the dullness of their wilderness recitations by repeating to the Puritan boys the fun of his hig, hag, hog; or telling the stories of the Calibans with which he peopled the Western worlds. We may well enough suppose that such vanities as that helped to exile our first master from the comforts of young Boston to the desolate home to which he was sent on the Piscataqua. He was an exiled exile—an exile of the second power.

Our venerable Maude just preceded Harvard and Milton at Cambridge; and we may imagine John Milton in the deputy Grecian form

May 25th. This day the Selectmen in psuance of a vote order of the inhabitants of the towne dated the 9th of March last did renew unto Mr. Samll. Shrimpton his lease of Deer Island for the terme of 18 years, to commence from the 1st of March, 1693-94 (when his present lease will expire) at the rent of 14ld mony p. ann., to be paid on euery 1st day of March yearelie to the use of the Free schoole.

of St. Paul's school, London, hearing our Ezekiel Cheever, then in the fourth form, translate his Erasmus; or repeat his "as in praesenti.” So venerable may be one's classical genealogy! Here around us are men whose Latin and Greek makes but five leaps from the scholarship of the Reformation to our day!-men who learned of Hunt, who learned of Lovell, who learned of Williams, who learned of Cheever, who with Milton studied not only "Erasmus his Colloquies," but his Syntaxis from some one to whom he had himself explained his plan of education.

Coming down, our historian will find that our village is, indeed, not unlike "that Rome"-illa Roma-whose history is ours; whose literature and learning bred ours. While the Doctors of Christ's and Magdalen at Oxford were fighting James II and his quo warrantos, were not our Cheever and his associates elsewhere, worried in like wise by James's Gov. Andros, so that they like their English brethren hailed the Revolution as their emancipation?

Who shall imagine the process by which five and twenty years after, our kind master," as Franklin calls him, so instructed the young Benjamin in the Latin Accidence that after eight months the boy ceased therefrom; and in his after years wrote as a consequence those severe attacks upon the study of the classics, which, to this moment makes it dangerous to give a copy of Franklin as a present to an inquiring boy. Heresies these-let us say in passing-which he tried afterward to extenuate, by leaving the Latin School as one of the objects of his dying bounty; as it will be in its annual festivities, the latest herald of his name.

Later down, the historian will fairly exult in describing the School room of the last century, divided in its allegiance, its affections, and its politics, between Master Lovell, the father, the Tory:— and Master Lovell, the son, the Whig:- as they sat, one at each end of the long hall, each pouring into infant minds as he could from the classics of the Empire, or the historians of the Republic, the lessons of absolutism or of liberalism. Let him imagine the boys thronging Faneuil Hall, when our Master Lovell dedicated it! Little recked he the future, for he consecrated it to loyalty to the house of Brunswick! Years after, let him imagine the boys of that day dividing into two camps, one unwilling, going to school April 2, 1771, because old Master Lovell would give no holiday; the other eager with patriotism and fun, defying his authority, that they

* This passage was written in 1850, but is still true in 1883, as one of Hunt's pupils is yet alive.

might go to the Old South, to hear the young Master Lovell deliver the first memorial Oration of the Bloody Boston Massacre.

Who shall describe-now that our venerable friend* has gone, who was chief actor?-the deputation of our school boys who waited on General Haldiman, of a winter's morning, to complain that their inalienable rights had been taken away, when his servant had strewed ashes across the coast which passed the School house? Who describe their exultation when the hireling was sent out to remove his obnoxious interruption. It was the first victory of the Revolution.

And alas! we have lost also the lips † which told of the morning of the 19th April: when Percy's brigade paraded for the last time in full ranks, so as to cut off a little Otis's access to the School house: -so that he arrived only in time to see the excited Master's face- as he marshalled the class who never saw him again, and cried "War's begun, and school's done. Deponite libros." Percy's brigade, stretched across the head of School Street, stopped our Otis on his way to our School. Did that Otis forget it, when in his English oration at Commencement in 1783, he was the first Harvard Orator to prophesy the future greatness of the independent America?

And when school was done, our boys-we might also say our girls had their part to play. Where did John Hancock practice that writing flourish, than which none is better known-we might say more revered - but on our first form when he had come back from the Holbrook's or Carter's "Intermediate" of his day? On the Declaration, led off by his name, ours are one-ninth of the signatures. And the curious may yet trace in the careful name of Franklin, in the gentlemanly writing of Hooper and in the clear legibility of the others, those traits which we have even lately heard our venerable writing master § describe in the second copy of his large hand as the

Boston style of Writing

Whose sympathies were engaged in the hot day of Bunker Hill, when the English general in the first attack found his artillery silent, and inquiring found that the six-pounders were furnished with

* Jonathan Darby Robins.

See Otis's letter.

+ Harrison Gray Otis.

§ Jonathan Snelling.