A Chronological History of New-England in the Form of Annals (Volume 1) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. Excerpt from book: Section 3To his Excellency JONATHAN BELCHER, Esq., Captain General and Governor in Chief in and over his Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England, and c. To the Honourable SPENCER PHIPPS, Esq., Lieutenant Governor, AND To the Honourable His Majesty's Council, and House of Re- presentatives of said Province. THe Province, under your united care, being the Principal of the New England Governments, containing especially the two First Colonies, of Plymouth and the Massachusetts, from whence the others chiefly derived; and having the greatest share in the following Work: to whom, could a son of the Province more properly offer this fruit of his labours, than to Your Excellency and Honours? Especially when he beholds you as mostly, if not wholly, descendants from the worthy P'athers of these Plantations, whom Yourselves and posterity cannot but have in everlasting honour: not only for their eminentself-denial and piety, wherein they set examples for future ages to admire and imitate; but also for their great concern that the same Vital and Pure Christianity, and Liberty, both civil and ecclesiastical, might be continued to their successors; for which, they left their own and their fathers' houses in the most pleasant places then on earth, with many of their dearest relatives, and came over the ocean into this then hideous wilderness. The peaceful fruits of whose extraordinary cares, labours, hardships, wisdom, courage, patience, blood, and death, we, under the Divine protection, and the justice of the best of kings, enjoy. It is to these, we firstly owe our pleasant houses, our fruitful fields, our growing towns and Churches, our wholesome laws, our precious privileges, our Grammar Schools and Colleges, our pious and learned Ministers and Magistrates, our good Government and or...