His
conflict with the authorities went so far that exile to another
Boston in another hemisphere became his only hope. Or, as Lord
Dorset intimated, "if he had been guilty of drunkenness,
uncleanness, or any lesser fault, he could have obtained his
pardon, but as he was guilty of Puritanism, and Non-conformity,
the crime was non-pardonable; and therefore he advised him to
flee for his safety."
The Cotton Chapel, so called, was restored mainly with moneys
received from Cotton's posterity, lineal or lateral, in his city
of refuge overseas, and "the corbels that support the timbered
ceiling are carved with the arms of certain of the early
colonists of New England." Edward Everett, one of Cotton's
descendants, wrote the dedicatory inscription in Latin, which "R.
N." has Englished in verse, and I am the more scrupulous to quote
it, because, as I must own with my usual reluctant honesty, I
quite missed seeing the Cotton Chapel.
That here John Cotton's memory may survive
Where for so long he labored when alive,
In James' reign and Charles', ere it ceased--
A grave, skilled, learned, earnest parish-priest;
Till from the strife that tossed the Church of God
He in a new world sought a new abode,
To a new England, a new Boston came,
(That took, to honor him, that reverend name)
Fed the first flock of Christ that gathered there--
Till death deprived it of its shepherd's care--
There well resolved all doubts of mind perplext,
Whether with cares of this world or the next;
Two centuries five lustra from the year
That saw the exile leave his labors here,
His family, his townsmen, with delight--
(Whom to the task their English kin invite)--
To the fair fane he served so well of yore,
His name, in two worlds honored, thus restore,
This chapel renovate, this tablet place,
In this, the year of man's recovered Grace,
1855.
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