BOSTON, Mass., the capital of the State, and, according to the United States census of 1910, fifth city in population in the United States. It is situated on the western shore of Massachusetts Bay.
The settlement from which it has grown was made in 1630 by members of the Massachusetts Bay Company, bearin? with them the charter granted to this organization by Charles I. The leader of the first expedition of settlers who landed at Charlestown, 17 June 163o, was Gov. John Winthrop, a Puritan gentleman. In his fleet came others of like condition, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Isaac John son and his wife, the Lady Arbella, daughter of the Earl of Lincoln, together with a com pany of sturdy Puritans, chiefly from Lincoln shire. They landed 700 or 800 strong, a num ber soon increased to 1,000 and then to 2,000 by later arrivals — the most considerable settle ment on the American coast. At the end of the first summer, a season of hardship, they moved across the Charles River to the promontory of Shawmut — an Indian word translated giving This headland, with ample water supply, was called by the English settlers Tri mountain, from the three-peaked hill, now Beacon Hill, which formed its highest emi nence. On 17 Sept. 1630 it was voted to change its name to Boston, after the Lincoln shire town from which some of the chief settlers had come. The original settler of the land, the Rev. William Blackstone (q.v.), a scholar who had left England to. avoid the *lord-bishops," sold the newcomers his land and moved on to Rhode Island, in order to escape the ulord-brethren." From the first the power of the Puritan clergy was important. Church and State were practically one. Trained in the English univer sities, the ministers set a true value upon edu cation. A free public school was established in 1633, and in 1636 the General Court pro vided for the beginnings of Harvard College. The government of both town and colony was purely democratic, having for its unit the town meeting, which in Boston itself maintained its sway, with the single interruption of British military rule at the outbreak of the Revolution, until the town became a city in 1822. Besides
the training in self-government thus acquired, Boston had the advantage of virtual independ ence through its early years. At first the Crown was fully occupied with its own problems in England; and when Cromwell came into power, so strongly Puritan a settlement was naturally left much to its own devices. Thus the charter of the Bay Company and the liberties enjoyed under it became very dear to the people of Bos ton. When Charles II came to the throne there were grave fears that these liberties would be seriously curtailed. In 1664 four royal com missioners came from England to adjust diffi culties in several colonies. Their mission to Boston was a failure, and for some years to come the town was secure under its original system of government.
Under James II came the dreaded change. Complaints of the Boston spirit of independ ence and religious intolerance were borne more frequently to the English court, and before the death of Charles II the Court of Chancery voted the Massachusetts Bay charter vacated. In the summer of 1686 the original government of the colony came to an end. Before the close of this year, Sir Edmund Andros, the new gov ernor appointed by the king, the first chief magistrate in Massachusetts not chosen by pop ular election, arrived in Boston. Probably no body in his peculiar place could have satisfied the people at this time. Within less than three years from his arrival a bloodless revolution in Boston, a well-organized uprising of the people, removed him from office. Early in 1690 he was sent back to England, where Increase Mather, the leading minister of Boston, had already been for nearly two years, trying to have the old charter restored, or to get the best possible substitute for it. This he suc ceeded in doing, after the accession of William and Mary, and had the further satisfaction of choosing the first governor under the new instrument making Massachusetts a royal prov ince. With this governor, Sir William Phipps, Mather returned to Boston in the spring of 1692.