In the same letter the colony was
enjoined to put in force the royal orders of seventeen years before,
concerning the oath of allegiance, the restriction of the suffrage, and
the prohibition of the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: The Gorges
claim]
This peremptory message reached Boston about Christmas, 1679. Leverett,
the sturdy Ironsides, had died six months before, and his place
was filled by Simon Bradstreet, a man of moderate powers but great
integrity, and held in peculiar reverence as the last survivor of those
that had been chosen to office before leaving England by the leaders of
the great Puritan exodus. Born in a Lincolnshire village in 1603, he was
now seventy-six years old. He had taken his degree at Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, had served as secretary to the Earl of Warwick, and in 1629
had been appointed member of the board of assistants for the colony
about to be established on Massachusetts bay. In this position he had
remained with honour for half a century, while he had also served as
Federal Commissioner and as agent for the colony in London. His wife,
who died in 1672, was a woman of quaint learning and quainter verses,
which her contemporaries admired beyond measure. One of her books was
republished in London, with the title: "The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up
in America.
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