first Chief Magistrate. From a will which he made in Groton in 1620, of
course superseded after his change of country, it appears that he had
then five sons and one daughter. The Lordship of Groton had been
assigned to him by his father. This was the year of the hegira of the
Plymouth Pilgrims, but we have as yet no intimation that Winthrop was
looking in this direction.

For more than a decade of years the family-history now passes on, for
the most part placidly, interspersed with those incidents and anxieties
which give alike the charm and the import to the routine of existence to
any closely knit fellowships sharing it together. Enough of the fragrant
old material, in fast decaying papers, has come to light and been
transcribed for security against all future risks, to preserve to us a
fair restoration of the lights and shades of that domestic experience.
Time has dealt kindly in sparing a variety of specimens, so as to give
to that restoration a kaleidoscopic character. Winthrop's frequent
visits to London, on his professional errands, gave occasion to constant
correspondence between him and his wife, and so we have epistles
burdened with the intensities and refinements of the purest affection.
An occasional reference to church affairs by the Patron of Groton, with
extracts from the record of his religious experience, continue for us
the evidence that Winthrop was growing and deepening in the roots of
his noble style of life. His piety evidently ripened and mellowed into
the richest fruitage which any form of theological or devotional faith
can produce. A severe and wellnigh fatal illness in London, which he
concealed from his wife at Groton till its crisis was past, was made by
him the occasion, as of many other good resolutions, so also of a
renouncement of the use of tobacco, in which, by his own account, he,
like many men as well as women at that time, had gone to excess. His
good wife, though positively enjoined by him not to venture upon the