Having inferred from some Conversation with you, that this Fact was unknown, I have taken the Liberty to relate it precisely, according to my Recollection, as I had it from M Dexter.

With great Regard and Esteem,

I remain, my dear Sir,
Your faithful and affectionate
Servant,

The Honble ARTEMAS WARD.

C. GORE.

The President read a letter from Mr. S. L. M. Barlow, of New York, who had communicated to the Society some valuable historical tracts. Whereupon it was

Voted, To return the thanks of the Society to Mr. Barlow, and to present to him a copy of the new volume of Aspinwall Papers, he being now the owner of the original manuscripts. Mr. ADAMS, referring to the presentation by him of some official papers at the last meeting, made an addition to the gift of other papers from the same source. Some of those papers now presented he regarded as of more value than the others, inasmuch as he believed that all of them had not been printed. The Society expressed its grateful acknowledgments for this interesting and valuable gift.

JULY MEETING, 1871.

A stated meeting was held this day, Thursday, July 13th, at eleven o'clock, A.M.; the President in the chair.

The Recording Secretary read the record of the last meeting. The Librarian read the usual list of donors to the Library for the month.

The Corresponding Secretary read a letter of acceptance from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The President noticed, in the following manner, the death of George Grote, LL.D., of England, an Honorary Member:

Since our last meeting information has reached us of the death of George Grote, whose name will ever be associated with the History and Philosophy of Ancient Greece.

The son of an eminent English banker, in whose house for many years he served as a clerk, without the advantages of a university education, he has left works which, for patient research, profound learning, liberal thought, careful and bril

liant composition, are hardly second to any which his country or his age has produced.

His History of Greece, in twelve volumes, of which the two first were published in 1846, and the last in 1855, won for him, as was well said by the "London Quarterly Review," "the title not merely of a historian, but of the historian of Greece," and was everywhere regarded as a noble monument of the best scholarship of England.

His "Plato and the other Companions of Socrates," in three volumes, published in 1865, intended, as he says in its preface, "as a sequel and supplement " to the History, has done more than any other work in the English language, if not in any language, to bring the Socratic philosophy within the reach and comprehension of modern minds.

Mr. Grote was one of the representatives of the City of London for nine years, from 1832 to 1841, and was an earnest advocate of parliamentary reform and of the rights of the people. He was the author of several powerful pamphlets on the political questions of the day, and a contributor of more than one learned article to the English reviews on questions connected with the Greek legends and literature. A zealous friend of education, he succeeded Lord Brougham as President of the Council of the University of London, and at his death was President of University College, and Vice-Chancellor of London University. Oxford and Cambridge conferred on him their highest Honorary degrees, and the Institute of France elected him to the vacancy created by the death of Lord Macaulay, as one of their Foreign Associates.

He was not insensible to the recognition which he could not fail to receive in our own land, whose great experiment of Free Government he had long watched with warm interest and sympathy. On the title-page of his "Plato" he adds to his other titles that of "Honorary Member of the Historical Societies of Massachusetts and of Philadelphia, U. S. of America." His name was placed on our Honorary Roll in 1863.

Born in 1794, he died at the age of 77. He was buried beneath the pavement of "Poets' Corner," at Westminster Abbey, near the grave of Macaulay, on the 25th of June last.

The President read a letter from Richard L. Pease, of Edgartown, presenting to the Society a copy of a report by him on the Gay Head Indians.

The following memoranda from Mr. Pease were also read by him:

SIR,In looking over the extremely interesting papers of your distinguished ancestor, Governor Winthrop, contained in the Mass. Hist. Collections, xxxvii., I find some statements that need correction, and I herewith submit these notes.

EDGARTOWN, May, 1871.

RICHARD L. PEASE.

Mass. Hist. Coll., xxxvii., p. 35. In his reference to his "sonnes," Mr. Mayhew must have intended both Thomas Mayhew, Jr., his only son, the distinguished missionary to the Indians of Martha's Vineyard, and first pastor of the church in Edgartown, who was lost in the ship Capt. Garrett, that sailed from Boston for England, in November, 1657; and Thomas Paine, son of Mr. Mayhew's wife, and brotherin-law and step-brother to Rev. Thomas Mayhew, Jr., who went in the same ship.

Same volume, page 30. The dates of the birth and death of Governor Thomas Mayhew are almost invariably wrongly given. He is stated to have been, by different authorities, 90, 91, 92, 93, and 94 years of age, when he died. He made his will "in this ninetieth year of my age, written with my own hand this sixteenth day of June, and sealed with my seal, Anno Domini, 1681.” He was living the following March, and signed several papers March 24, 1682, and very probably died that day. The exact date of his death is unknown, but he lacked six days of being ninety when he died. (See the letter of his grandson, Matthew Mayhew, in the Hinckley Papers, Vol. xxxv. 61, Mass. Hist. Coll.)

Same volume, page 40. In this letter Governor Mayhew speaks of himself as 71 years and 5 months old. Query. Is the date of his letter given correctly? It will accord with other facts if it be 1663.* RICHARD L. PEASE.

The President read the following letter from our associate, Dr. Dexter, now absent in Europe:

Hon. ROBERT C. WINTHROP

BAWTRY, YORKSHIRE, ENG., 19 June, 1871.

MY DEAR SIR, - I have ventured to assume your sense of my lively gratitude for the copy of your Plymouth Oration, which you were so kind as to send me, which has repeated in its perusal the great satisfaction which was experienced in hearing it; and have not pre

The date in the original MS. is clearly "15-7-64"; that is, 15th Sept., 1664. And the reference in the letter to the arrival of the King's Commissioners shows that it could not have been written in 1663. Mayhew himself errs, as aged persons are apt to, respecting his own age. The earlier statement is more likely to be the true one. The papers which he signed March 24," the probable day of his death, being then the last day of the year, should have been dated "1681." If he died on that day, then the statement, on page 30 of the volume referred to, that he died that year, should be regarded with indulgence. The dates in the note were really taken from Savage who is there cited. - EDS.

sumed to trespass on your time and attention until I had something to say which I thought it would give you pleasure to know.

After spending five months in London in studying at the Record Office, the British Museum, the Williams' Library, and elsewhere, the origin of the Separatists and the Mayflower emigration, I came here to see what I could make of a deliberate survey of the Scrooby and Austerfield localities and records. I have been resident here, with my family, now more than a month, and have familiarized myself with intense pleasure, and I trust the event will prove not without profit, with this "maximæ gentis incunabula."

I am bound to say, in the outset, that I have received the most marked kindness from the vicars and curates of the neighborhood, and indeed from all with whom I have come into contact. You will be pleased to know that through the thoughtfulness of Lady Lowther— whose estimable daughter, Mrs. Lysley, with her husband, son of a late Liberal member of Parliament, whom you may have known, is now tenant of The Hall - a copy of your Oration had been much passed from hand to hand here, and had served greatly to heighten and to make intelligent the local feeling of interest in the Scrooby manor and its history.

With the assistance of my son, I have completed a careful survey and plan of the manor-house grounds; and, through favor of Lord Houghton, have made numerous excavations which have revealed extended masses of foundations, the débris of demolished buildings, &c, to a degree heretofore (of late years) unknown. From these, and from various other sources of evidence, e.g., it is on record that as many as 500 were in the suite of the Princess Margaret, when she spent a night there in June, 1503,— I had satisfied myself that, quite down to the date of its occupancy by our William Brewster, this was a much more considerable place, in point of size and accommodation, than Mr. Hunter imagined, or than Mr. Raine, in his painstaking "History and Antiquities of Blythe," is willing to acknowledge. But among the records of the Chapter House at York I find the lease (of 1582) under which Sir Samuel Sandys held Scrooby manor from his father, the archbishop, with a previous one (of date 1558), from whose enumerations and specifications it becomes easy to see that "the great Court" and "the little Court" which Leland saw and described, with the Manor-house proper, the Hall, the Chapel, two galleries, and a great number of buildings for various farming and domestic convenience, were then still remaining upon the premises.

Thanks to the unwearied kindness of Canon Raine, the accomplished secretary of the Surtees Society, I have further discovered the original document by which the father of our William Brewster, himself bearing the name, was in 1575-76 made Receiver of Scrooby manor, and of all its Liberties in Nottinghamshire, and also Bailiff of the Manor-house; to hold both offices for life. This was when our William (if we take the Leyden date for his birth-year) was only about nine years old, and accounts satisfactorily for the position which his father held, as being in residence there, not by under-lease from Sir

Samuel Sandys, as has been supposed without proof in the production of such a lease, but officially, as representing the archbishop as his legal and financial representative and attorney on the ground.

But I will not weary you, my dear sir, with what to an enthusiast like myself seem great things, but which need the enthusiasm of a specialty to be so magnified. I hope in time, God willing, to give a good account of them.

You will be further interested to know that as "out of the eater came forth meat," in the fact that the Mayflower church was brooded in this archbishop's nest, so also the same proverb is made true in the fact that Toby Mathew, who held the see from 1606, was a book collector, and gathered, preserved, and, as his pen margin-remarks prove, read nearly all of the Separatist tracts of his time, so that I have found among his treasures at Yorkminster Brownist tracts quite too scarce for the British Museum to own.

Begging a kind remembrance to Mr. Deane and other friends, I am, with grateful regard, faithfully yours,

HENRY M. DEXTER.

N.B. My address will continue "Care Morton, Rose, & Co., Bartholomew House, London." I leave for Holland about the first of July, if all goes well.

The President spoke of having recently seen our senior member, Mr. Savage, at the "Cliff House" in Newport, the residence of his son-in-law, Professor Rogers. He found him feeble in body and mind, and quite forgetful as to persons and things.

The President said inquiry had recently been made as to a person bearing the name of John M. Pintard, inscribed on a medal struck in 1787, to commemorate the fitting out of two ships from Boston for the north-west coast; viz., the "Columbia" and the "Washington." An engraving of the medal may be seen in Robert Greenhow's History of Oregon and California, 1844, p. 180, second ed. 1845.

No member present could give any information concerning this person.

The President spoke of the state of the negotiations with the City for a portion of the Society's building, and said if the matter should be consummated it would probably be necessary to mortgage our estate; and he suggested that power be now given for that purpose. Whereupon it was

Voted, That the President and Treasurer be authorized to execute a mortgage of the Society's land and building now owned and occupied by them, for a sum not exceeding sixty thousand dollars, if it shall become necessary to effect a loan of money to make the contemplated alterations in said building.