FROM SIBLEY'S HARVARD GRADUATES:

John Cotton was born April 5, 1712, at Halifax, Mass., a son of Josiah and Hannah (Sturtevant) Cotton. He graduated from Harvard College in 1730. He was minister at Halifax for about twenty years, ordained 1735; resigned 1756. He went to Plymouth in1756 and was the registrar of deeds and city treasurer. He was a delegate to the convention to form a constitution for Massachusetts in 1780. Among his printed works are "Seasonable Warnings to the Churches of New England", "Tracts on Infant Baptism", and "History of Plymouth Churches". His library, chiefly of ancient literature, was considerable. He married, December 9, 1746, Hannah Sturtevant, born January 8, 1708; died May 24, 1800. He died November 4, 1789 at Plymouth.

John Cotton
(Harvard, 1730)

John Cotton, minister of Halifax, Massachusetts, and Register of Deeds of Plymouth County, was born on April 5, 1712, the oldest son of Judge Josiah (A.B. 1698) and Hannah (Sturtevant) Cotton of Plymouth. At college he was a member of the Philomusarian Club and a model student although for four years he lived in a college room and ate college food. The cost of his education forced the Judge to sell a portion of his farm and go into debt1 in spite of the fact that John helped out by his earnings as a Scholar of the House. Up until this time Harvard scholarships and "exhibitions" had been awarded on a basis of need and family position rather than scholastic excellence, but now the President took a portion of the income from the Hopkins gift to buy books for one or two "undergraduates distinguishing themselves by very well performing their academical Exercises."2 John won the first of these deturs, receiving copies of Cotton Mather's Manuductio ad Ministerium and Ratio Disciplinae. After graduation he obtained, thanks to his father's earnest efforts, short terms as schoolmaster at Billingsgate, in Eastham, and at Rochester, and Middleborough. On November 26, 1732, when temporarily out of employment as a teacher, he preached for the first time from the pulpit of the First Church of Plymouth. After he had conducted several services there he was invited to preach in the Second, or Manomet, Church, where he supplied the pulpit for several months. He also served as a supply at Wareham.

In June, 1733, Cotton returned to Cambridge to take his M.A., presenting a negative answer to the Quaestio, "An Beati in Cælis, Cupidinum ac Spei sint capaces?" In July he rented a college study, but he was drawn off by curiosity to see a New Haven Commencement. When he returned he was invited to preach to the congregation which was then forming to provide more accessible services for the inhabitants of the outlying parts of the towns of Plympton, Middleborough, and Pembroke. He began preaching to this group in November, 1733. In July, 1734, the area was incorporated as the town of Halifax, and in October, the church was organized. It first called Ephraim Keith (A.B. 1729), but he declined. Then, on April 9, 1735, it called Cotton, and the town concurred three weeks later. His letter of acceptance,3 which is dated July 21, is particularly flowery and verbose, but it raised the practical questions of the building of a parsonage and an annual supply of wood for it, on both of which points agreement was soon reached.

On September 14, 1735, Cotton was dismissed from the First Church of Plymouth to that at Halifax, over which he was ordained on October 1:

The Revd Mr. Eells [A.B. 1699] gave the Charge and Mr. Thacher [A.B. 1706] the Right hand of fellowship, and these two together with the Revd. Messers Lewis [A.B. 1707] and Stacey [A.B. 1719] assisted in laying on of hands. And this was done after the Church had publickly at said time renewed their Call to the said Mr. Cotton, and Mr. Cotton had verbally renewed his answer.4

As good a picture of the young minister as exists appears in a letter which he not long after this wrote to the Reverend John Cotton of the Isle of Wight:

I've bin fitted with vehement Desires . . . ever since I left the College to pay a visit to the Land of the forefathers Sepulcures, and the place of your present Residence. But Providence has given an Intire Supersedeat of all Motions of that Nature . . . For I am now as I Suppose Stated for life in a New Town called Hallifax. . . . I've bin a Constant preacher for about twelve years past, Having Entered on that work when I was near 21 . . . But I have not yet fallen into the Matrimonial State, Tho' I am no ways inclined to the monastic life Neither Do I approve the Celibacy of the Clergy.5

It was not, as a matter of fact, until December 9, 1746, that he married, and then his choice fell upon his second cousin Hannah, daughter of Josiah and Hannah (Church) Sturtevant of Halifax.6

As a minister, Cotton made a good impression on his contemporaries. Chief Justice Benjamin Lynde (A.B. 1686) thought that he "preached and prayed very distinctly and well,"7 and another contemporary described him as "a man of method, of few words, of much reading on historical, religious, and also medicinal subjects."8 Early in his career his position on most of the issues which distinguished a liberal from a conservative indicated that he belonged in the former camp. When his church became aware of this tendency, it defended its own conservative position by voting to elect deacons, to require public testimonials of conversion, and to sing after a precentor. The minister acquiesced in these votes, but after five years he succeeded in convincing his church that the "regular" system of singing from written notes without a precentor was the original, and therefore the proper, way.

The Halifax church admitted to its communion members of the Church of England, but its pastor complained of the activity of the Anglican church in New England:

The Church of England has bin greatly increased in these latter years amongst us . . . This wonderful increase of these of that Denomination is partially owing to the penurious Spirit of Some of our People, who fly to the Church of England in order to be Exempted from Rates & assessments towards the Support of our Clergy; For the Church does not Exact Tythes, or other Rates from any of their Members: But their Clergy are Supported from England; The money that is given towards the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts being appropriated for that use. A wretched Misapplication this! And beside the Intention of the Donors — which I Suppose was to Convert the Heathen Nations; and not to promote and uphold Divisions & Contentions amongst professed Christians. . . . Others There are whom when they have bin faithfully disciplined in the Churches for moral Scandal, Such as drunkeness and the like, Do immediately fly to the Church [of England] as a City of Refuge, and there they meet with a Ready Reception, and Soon being Staunch Members, and Highflyers in the worst Sense. By which Means our Congregations are often purged of Some of the Most Degenerate Members, and the Church is made to Consist Chiefly of Some of the worst of men, who would be a disgrace to any Profession whatsoever.9

The confusion which then existed in the Congregational churches he laid largely to the jealous Anglican group which had prevented the calling of a Congregational synod in Massachusetts. He was not particularly worried by heresy:

The Divines among us are Generally rigid Calvinists, Tho' Arminianism begins Somewhat to prevail, Especially at the College. As for Arrianism or Deism There are but a few that have as Yet imbibed those Tenets in the land.10

In spite of this theological weakness at Harvard he thought that the college was flourishing gloriously and like in fifty or a hundred years to afford as good an education as Oxford or Cambridge.

When, however, Harvard refused to cooperate in the Great Awakening, Cotton's faith in the college was shaken. For his own part he was a moderate New-Light, and he approved without reservation the Testimony and Advice of the pastors in favor of the revival. In a testimonial account which he published in the New-Light periodical he described how he had been won over by the preaching of Eleazar Wheelock (Yale 1733), and how the happily miserable children of his parish held their own miniature revivals:

All Frolicking and Carousing, and merry Meetings were laid aside: Foolish Talking and Jesting seem'd terrible to the young People; they could not endure it; they desir'd to hear nothing but what was serious and solemn; they took more Delight in going to a Meeting than ever they did to a Frolick. . . . One young Girl particularly of nine Years of Age when at Play with her Consorts out of Doors, tho' no Body had spoken to her of religious Things that Day; she fell down in great Distress, and said, "it seem'd as if Hell lay before her, that she was ready to fall into it."11

He opposed lay preaching and outcries in meeting, but signed the New-Light Testimony of September 25, 1745.

In the neighboring town of Middleborough the Old-Lights prevented the settlement of Sylvanus Conant (A.B. 1740) by the expedient of invoking the long-ignored property qualification for voting. Cotton joined in the battle to settle the young New-Light and published a Seasonable Warning to air the case in public. So far as his biography is concerned, this pamphlet is of less interest than the bitter reply which it invoked from an Old-Light layman:

When . . . I considered your Performance, how Scandal, Falshood, Ill-Nature and a Shew of Learning were so thick sprinkled over the whole of it, as even to darken the most trifling Matters of Fact. . . . Fye! for Shame on your Reverence! Do you take up with general Talk? Do you believe every idle Story that a zealous Brother or Sister tells you? — I have been told myself that you was an honest Man and a Man of Sense, but I don't believe a Word of it, nor shall any general Talk make me believe so, 'till I see Signs of Repentance for publishing your Seasonable Warning. . . .Well spoke, Mr. Committee-Man! But how dare you to say so before his High Mightiness and Reverence, Mr. John Cotton of Hallifax? Did you know he had more Power than the General Court, and could order you into his Presence in the thousandth part of a Minute, altho' you were ten Miles off? I did not think a New-Light himself would have had half the impudence to have said any thing like it, before his Hogan Moganship.12

This castigation did not deter Cotton from joining in the attack on Lemuel Briant (A.B. 1739) for his Arminianism. By his intimation that Arminians were lecherous he laid himself open to attack through the memory of his grandfather, the Reverend John Cotton (A.B. 1657), whose dismissal from the church at Plymouth resulted from the great scandal of the generation. Briant did not neglect this weapon:

Mr. Cotton, Suffer me to say further, that as I don't know my Intimates have been scandalous in any Instance, so am I very sure that their Grand-Fathers before them have never sinned in such a Sense, and to such a Degree, as to be forced to leave their Country for Iniquities sake, and to wander about in Goat-Skins least even the Dumb should bring a Charge of Leachery against them.13

It is interesting that Cotton both in print and private correspondence always denied that there was any evidence to support the moral charges made against his grandfather.

Matters were hardly more peaceful at Halifax, thanks to "the miscarriages & quarrels" brought on by his wife's relatives.14 Early in 1755, finding that he was losing his voice, he "took a Small voyage to Sea," evidently to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where a Mr. John Cotton preached for a while at the Mather Church.15 Back at home he decided that his voice would never recover so as to permit him to carry a regular burden of preaching, so with sorrow, for the ministry "was ever his greatest delight," he asked to be dismissed. An ecclesiastical council met on December 24 and approved his dismission with the understanding that it was no bar to his call elsewhere if he should recover his voice.

Cotton immediately removed to Plymouth where the opportune death of his father vacated the office of Register of Deeds to which he succeeded and which he held until his own death. He also quickly acquired the offices of town treasurer and assessor and of treasurer of Plymouth County. In 1762 he was appointed justice of the peace. With these offices he naturally succeeded his father as the most distinguished man in Plymouth, and as such was frequently elected moderator of town and church meetings. These offices carried more honors and responsibilities than profits, and as a result his financial position was not of the best.16

Justice Cotton was naturally the leading layman of the First Church and he enjoyed being invited to preach whenever the pulpit was vacant. In 1760 he welcomed Chandler Robbins (A.M. 1760), son of his old friend Philemon (A.B. 1729), and took the opportunity to write a history of the church in which he damned Arminians and lay preachers and kowtowed to the Fathers: "And seeing we are descended from such blessed Ancestors, of pious Memory, what Reason have we to be humbled, that we fall so short of their heavenly Pattern."17 Young Parson Robbins was a man of strong, if mistaken, views, and could not stand to have his church dominated by an ancient lay theologian. In 1770 he moved to have the church drop the Half-Way Covenant, and Cotton rushed to its defense, urging that it had been the practice of the church for a century past. The former pastor insisted on reading to the church a series of long essays on the subject of church membership, and Robbins, barred from debate by his position as moderator, could only sit and hiss loudly as the older man read. Taken to task for this, he said that Cotton lied; that he did not hiss but pish. In a personal letter to Cotton he was more explicitly critical:

What you read in your last Piece was a most injurious, unchristian, ungentleman-like, gross misrepresentation of the sentiments of your brethren who are on the other side of the question in debate. . . . To what purpose then, were these passionate exclamations and pathetic addresses to the people. . . . You, Sir, have more sense, I am persuaded, than to imagine men of tolerable penetration can look upon such popular harangues and appeals to men's passions, as sound reasoning.18

When he added the suggestion that Cotton was an Arminian, he received the reply that he might have expected:

Mr. Robbins, I must tell you, I scorn the charge; I know what is Arminianism as well as you do, and am as free from it as yourself. And you might with as much propriety call me an Arian, a Muggletonian, yea, a Deist as an Arminian.19

At the moment the Half-Way Covenant was a matter of serious public concern, so these essays, Robbins' replies, and the correspondence were avidly read when put into print; but the church at Plymouth became heartily sick of the matter and on June 30, 1772, voted twice not to hear the fourth essay. Later relenting out of respect for Cotton's gray hairs, it agreed to hear one more, but he complained of the conduct of one of Robbins' supporters while the reading was going on:

He could not hear me long with patience; for he kept altering his posture, rising and sitting, shifting seats, walking in the alley, running out of doors, and then returning; and sometimes speaking and objecting, trying to stop me, &c. For which management I gave a stamp at him, and kept on reading.20

After this, the First Church voted to have no more of Mr. Cotton's essays.

The two protagonists continued to carry on the debate in pamphlets which contributed nothing toward the solution of the problems of church polity involved, but do illuminate New England life in one of its undignified moments. Thus Cotton in replying to a Robbins pamphlet said:

It may perhaps gain the applause of the vulgar (for whom it seems especially calculated) and raise their indignation against me; but men of learning and penetration will easily see, that the merits of the cause are not touched. . . .
When he [Robbins] knew, that 3 quarters of the parish or more would gladly hear me preach, and (being about to take a journey to Connecticut), was earnestly urged by some of the principal men to invite me to supply the pulpit, and told, that it should not cost him a farthing; he rather than do it, chose to ride above 40 miles to get a young preacher, who when he came no body liked, and I was forced at last to preach part of the time, at the invitation of the deacons and the precinct committee.21

Thus the debate flickered out in personalities, well characterized in Robbins' last reply:

How any person could hold of such a temper, and keep it up to this heighth, for fifteen months together . . . while writing a book of about 150 pages, is to me perfectly astonishing and unaccountable. It has been observed, that there is not a page, but what contains some ungenerous reflection, or malevolent slander.22

Perhaps, however, old Mr. Cotton can be said to have done New England a service by meeting head-on a very able young religious reactionary.

Cotton was slightly liberal in matters of ecclesiastical policy, but he was no social democrat. When he heard that Yale, where his son Josiah was a Sophomore, was abandoning the system of academic seniority based on the social status of the parents, he protested bitterly to President Daggett:

I have lately been perusing President Clap's account of your College, and was Surprised to find the last Classes of under-Graduates Set down in alphabetical order; and upon Enquiry understand Something of the Reason of it; But this now perhaps ceases upon Mr. Clap's Demise. It Seems none of these Classes have as yet taken their Degrees; So that tis not yet too late to follow the former Regulation. I'm perswaded it will give great Dissatisfaction if the new Method takes place; It may perhaps save the Governours of the College Some Trouble, and prevent some Reflections from Some few particular Gentlemen, who think their Sons have not their due Place; But the other way will disgust Gentlemen in general, whose Sons must perhaps Stand the lowest, and have one brot up by Charity or of the meanest Parantage often at their Head. And I'm fully satisfied the new Constitution cannot Stand long; as Soon as Some of your Governors or Assistants or Some Gentlemen of great influence in your Government shall have Sons to send to the College, they will either oblige you to alter your Conduct, or Send their Sons elsewhere, where they can have Some Mark of Respect placed upon them. And if you should at last return to your old Custom, how indecorous will it be to have a few alphabetical Classes stand in the middle of your Catalogue, and all the rest placed according to their Station in Life. For my Part I'm sensible that the Difference with Respect to my Sons Place in the Class will be but little, which Method soever is followed; yet this I must Say, That (tho' in several Respects I prefer New Haven before Cambridge) if I had known of this New Scheme before hand and my Son had been 3 or 4 years younger, I should rather (upon this very account) have Stayed a Year Longer for his Admission than have sent him to Newhaven. And I believe it will be a general Discouragement to Gentlemen at a Distance and particularly in our Province to Send their Sons amongst you (whatever Esteem they May have of your Society upon other accounts) if they must in this Sort be degraded and no Distinction be made between them & the lowest Sort. Upon the Whole, I would query, whether the new method does not Savor too much of the Doctrine of Levelism, which has not much Credit in the present Age. . . .
If the Classes should be placed, I trust you are not unacquainted with my present (as with former) Situation in Life. I would only Say, that my Father not only enjoyed my present offices, But was chief Judge or Justice of our County Courts for many Years.
I would add to what has been said above, That by not placing the Classes, you lose one of the most considerable & effectual Curbs upon the Scholars to prevent Misdemeanors, namely, the Terrors of Degradation; which near or quite equals that of Expulsion: and the latter you must perhaps have often Recourse to in case of high-handed offences, for Want of some adequate Punishment. A Fine will be esteemed as nothing by vitious young Men; Their Parents Purses must bear that.23

His was a voice crying in a growing wilderness of democracy, for the very next year Harvard followed Yale in abandoning the system of social seniority.

In the political affairs of the Revolutionary period there was never any doubt that Justice Cotton was a Whig and a rebel. On November 24, 1772, he signed the Plymouth petition protesting the placing of his classmate Oliver and the other Superior Court judges on the royal pay roll,24 and later he served on the town committee to draft the resolutions.25 In 1776 he was elected to the Plymouth Committee of Correspondence but declined to serve, probably because of his age, for he also refused to serve as selectman. He did, however, serve on a town committee to set "the prices of Inholders, Labour of all kinds, and the manufactures of this Town & all the necessarys & conveniences of life."26 Later in the war he served on the town draft board. In 1776 he was a member of a town committee to consider the nature of the proposed State constitution, and four years later he was a member of the constitutional convention. In the first election under the new constitution he received one vote for the office of State senator.

Justice Cotton clung to his offices because they brought him a little money in an evil period of inflation. Twice he worked out his small share of special taxes by keeping the account of their collection. After the War he began to shed his public duties, and in October, 1782, he asked that his son Josiah be appointed a justice of the peace to help him carry the burden of that now too onerous office. He died at Plymouth on November 4, 1789, and his widow on May 25, 1800. They had eleven children, of whom Josiah was graduated at Yale in 1771 and Ward at Harvard in 1793.27 He left a large library, chiefly of classical authors. He continued the voluminous diary, or memoir, kept by his father, but the manuscript of it, which was for some years deposited in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, has not been found since the death of its owner. The Congregational Library has some of his sermons in manuscript.

Works

An Appendix, Containing an Account of the Church of Christ in Plymouth, affixed to Philemon Robbins, A Sermon Preached at the Ordination of . . . Chandler Robbins, Boston, 1760. AAS, BA, BPL, CL, H, JCB, MHS, NYP, Y.
— Reprinted in I Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc. IV, 107-41.

An Appendix, pp. 29-64, in John Porter, A Vindication, Boston, 1751. AAS, BA, BPL, JCB, LC, MHS, NYH, Y.

The General Practice of the Churches of New-England, Relating to Baptism, Vindicated. . . . Delivered at Several Church-Meetings in Plymouth. With Some Letters that Passed on the Subject. . . . Boston, [1772]. (6), 73 pages. AAS, BA, BPL, CHS, CL, H, HEH, JCB, MHS, NYP, WLC, Y.

The General Practice of the Churches of New-England, Relating to Baptism, Further Vindicated. . . . An Answer to the Rev. Chandler Robbins's Reply. . . . Together with some Further Remarks on Mr. Robbins's Injurious Treatment of the Author. . . . Boston, 1773. 154, (1) pages. AAS, BA, BPL, CL, H, LC, MHS, NYH, NYP, Y.

God's Call to His People. . . . Two Sermons Preached at Plymouth, June 30. 1757. Being a Day of General Humiliation, Occasioned by Drought and the War. . . . Boston, 1757. 43 pages. AAS, BA, CL, JCB, MHS, NYH.

The Right Hand of Fellowship, pp. 53-5 in Joseph Fish, Love to Christ, Newport, 1747, was probably the work of Josiah Cotton (A.B. 1722). AAS, BA, BPL, H, JCB, LC, MHS, NYH, WLC.

Seasonable Warning to These Churches. A Narrative of the Transactions at Middleborough . . . in Settling a Minister [Sylvanus Conant]. . . . Boston, 1746. 38 pages. AAS, BA, BPL, CHS, CL, H, JCB, MHS, NYH, Y.

The Separation of the Tares and Wheat. . . . Preached . . . at Attleborough . . . January 9, 1746,7. . . . Boston, [1747]. (4), 44 pages. AAS, CHS, LC.

1. Josiah Cotton, Memoirs (Mass. Hist. Soc.), pp. 206-7.

2. Hopkins Trustees' Minutes (Harvard University Archives), back pages. The M. H. S. has Cotton's Ms. copy of Monis' Hebrew grammar.

3. Mayflower Descendant, XXVI, 179.

4. Ibid., p. 180; Boston News-Letter, Nov. 27, 1735.

5. Draft of a letter in H. U. A., HUG 300.

6. According to the genealogies she was born in 1708, but this cannot be reconciled with the fact that she bore a son in 1770. Her gravestone says that she was 73 when she died in 1800.

7. The Diaries of Benjamin Lynde, Sr., and Benjamin Lynde, Jr., Boston, 1880, pp. 70-1.

8. 2 Coll. M. H. S. IV, 283.

9. Letter to John Cotton of the Isle of Wight.

10. Ibid.

11. Christian History, I (1744), 259-70.

12. Ebenezer Morton, More Last Words to These Churches, Boston, 1746, pp. 6, 20, 27.

13. Lemuel Briant, Some More Friendly Remarks, Boston, 1751, p. 26.

14. Josiah Cotton, p. 403.

15. Nova Scotia Hist. Soc. Coll. XVI, 163.

16. John Adams, Works, Boston, 1850-58, II, 206.

17. Appendix, p. 35, in Philemon Robbins, Sermon Preached at the Ordination of . . . Chandler Robbins, Boston, 1760.

18. Quoted in John Cotton, The General Practice of the Churches of New-England, Relating to Baptism, Vindicated, Boston, [1772] p. 34.

19. Ibid., p. 41.

20. Cotton, The General Practice of the Churches of New-England, Relating to Baptism, Further Vindicated, Boston, 1773, p. 145.

21. Ibid., pp. 6, 134-5.

22. Chandler Robbins, Some Brief Remarks on a Piece . . . The General Practice of the Churches . . . Further Vindicated, Boston, 1774.) p. 19.

23. Cotton to Daggett (Yale University Library), June 9, 1768.

24. Records of the Town of Plymouth, III (Plymouth, 1903), pp. 261-2.

25. Ibid., pp. 265-6; Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter, Dec. 24, 1772, p. 4.

26. Cotton's report with the schedule of prices is printed in Plymouth Records, III, 378-80.

27. For the children see La Verne C. Cooley, A Short Biography of the Rev. John Cotton of Boston and a Cotton Genealogy, Batavia, n. d., p. 37.

Sibley's Harvard Graduates, 8:681-691.