edition of his "History of Lynn" under date of 1805, the following:

"For one hundred and seventy-three years, from the building of the first parish meeting-house, the people had annually assembled in it for the transaction of their municipal concerns. But this year, the members of that parish observing the damage which such meetings occasioned to the house, and believing that, since the incorporation of other parishes, the town had no title in it, refused to have it occupied as a town-house. This refusal occasioned much controversy between the town and parish, and committees were appointed by both parties to accomplish an adjustment. An engagement was partially made for the occupation of the house, on the payment of twenty-eight dollars annually; but the town refused to sanction the agreement, and the meetings were removed to the Methodist meeting-house, on the eastern part of the com

mon."

If

This statement unabridged and unenlarged upon stands in each subsequent edition of Lewis and of Newhall. the records of the Parish and Town had been written out fully, there would have been much of historical interest in the dramatic ending of the Puritan problem of a union of Church and State, Parish and Town, in Lynn. A peculiar circumstance connected with the printed annals of Lynn is the fact that two men, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Newhall, who did so much to elucidate our history, were not in touch with that amazing religious reformation which created the short-lived Commonwealth of England and the enduring Commonwealth of Massachusetts. While each was loyal

THE CHAIRMAN: A counselor learned in the law, who has graced the bench, an honored public servant of both City and Commonwealth, also a profound investigator into the deeds of the past, which he has recorded in English pure and undefiled, is worthy of the homage of his townspeople.

It is my privilege to introduce to you the Honorable Nathan Mortimer Hawkes, who represents the Lynn Historical Society, which is believed to be the largest local organization of the kind in this country.

to his native Town, each was proud of his connection with the church, the protesting against conformity with which was the moving cause of the settling of Massachusetts. If our historian had been a Congregationalist, either Unitarian or Trinitarian, he would have found a theme of interest in tracing the sequence of events which led to this controversy.

The theory of the Puritan planters was that the fee of all lands was in the Company,* and that grants for plantations were made for the settlement of a Parish, and incidentally for the civil concerns of such Parish. A prime concern of the Parish and its creature the Town was the support of the ministry. Hence the Town in granting to individuals made it a condition that all the land should bear its share in the common burdens of the Town, an important item of which was the ministry.

Rev. Dr. Parsons Cooke in the most pungent and brilliant polemical work ever written in Lynn said:

"This was the obligation which lay upon the land, a reserve tacitly made in the original grant, and which could not be nullified in passing from one owner to another. It was a condition in the deed which bound and attached it to the titles of all future owners."

The Puritan plan of carrying on all affairs ecclesiastic and civic in the Parish seems to have worked without friction in Lynn until the Colonial Charter was abrogated and

The Company in this connection means the organized body of Puritan leaders in England, to whom, on the 4th day of March, 1628-9, in the fourth year of the reign of Charles I, "The Charter of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England was granted."

the usurpation of Sir Edmund Andros had been ended and the Provincial Charter was in full force. For nearly a hundred years the Puritan Theocracy had dominated New England. Great changes took place in the era of the Provincial Charter and of the Royal Governors.

The meeting-house (not the first meeting-house but the first erected on the Common) had been built by assessment upon all the acres of the whole Town in 1682.

In spite of the locating of new parishes and the setting up of rival denominations, the meeting-house of the First Parish was the place of meeting for all purposes of the Town for one hundred and seventy-three years, as Mr. Lewis recorded.

The first break in the Parish was a legitimate one even from the Puritan standpoint. It was a long distance for the farmers of Lynn End, or Lynnfield, to travel to worship on Lynn Common in the short winter days when they frequently had more severe snow storms than we have

seen.

Recognizing this stumbling block in the way of proper observance of the Lord's day, the Town voted, November 17, 1712:

"In answer to the petition of our neighbors, the farmers, so-called, dated Feb. 13, 1711, desiring to be a precinct, that all the part of the Town that lies on the northerly side of that highway that leads from Salem to Reading be set off for a precinct, and when they shall have a meetinghouse and a minister, qualified according to law, settled to preach the word of God amongst them, then they shall be wholly freed from paying to the ministry of the Town and not before. And if afterwards they shall cease to main