In Memoriam MAJOR SIMON WILLARD, BORN 1604, DIED 1676. EXACTLY ONE HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. A KENTISH SOLDIER-AND AN EARLY PIONEER IN THE SETTLEMENT OF THE BRITISH COLONY OF NEW ENGLAND, AMERICA, 1634. HE WAS MADE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE BRITISH FORCES HE WAS DISTINGUISHED IN THE MILITARY LEGISLATIVE OF SIMON WILLARD'S ANCESTORS ONE WAS PROVOST OF CANTERBURY 1218, AND ANOTHER WAS BARON OF CINQUE PORTS 1377, AND HIS DESCENDANTS TO THE PRESENT DAY HAVE HELD EMINENT POSITIONS IN THE UNITED STATES. ERECTED BY SYLVESTER D. WILLARD, M.R.C.8. APRIL MEETING, 1908 ASTATED MEETING of the Society was held at No. 25 Beacon Street, Boston, on Thursday, 23 April, 1908, at three o'clock in the afternoon, the President, HENRY LEFAVOUR, LL.D., in the chair. The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read, and, after slight amendment, approved. The CORRESPONDING SECRETARY pro tempore reported that a letter had been received from the Hon. FRANK WARREN HACKETT accepting Corresponding Membership. The President appointed the following Committees in anticipation of the Annual Meeting: To nominate candidates for the several offices, - Mr. WALDO LINCOLN, Dr. JAMES B. AYER, and Mr. JOHN NOBLE, Jr. To examine the Treasurer's Accounts, NER M. LANE and FRANCIS H. LINCOLN. Messrs. GARDI On behalf of Mr. DENISON R. SLADE, a Corresponding Member, Mr. HENRY H. EDES exhibited a silhouette' by Doyle of John Cheverus,2 the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Boston. 'This silhouette of Bishop Cheverus belonged originally to the Rev. Dr. Eliphalet Pearson (H. C. 1773), a Fellow of the Corporation of Harvard College, and the first Principal of Phillips Academy, Andover. It was inherited by his daughter Margaret Bromfield Pearson, who married the Rev. I. H. T. Blanchard (H. C. 1817), the Unitarian minister of Harvard, Massachusetts, and always adorned the wall of her chamber. At her death it passed to her kinsman our late associate Dr. Daniel Denison Slade, and is now the property of his son, Mr. Denison R. Slade. See Publications of this Society, v. 198 note, 205 note, viii. 290. * Jean Louis Anne Madeleine Lefebvre de Cheverus (1768-1836) signed himself, when Bishop of Boston, John Cheverus (Memorial History of Boston, iii. 518 ). Mr. ANDREW MCFARLAND DAVIS read the following paper: HINTS OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE IN THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS SHEPARD. In the fall of 1634, Thomas Shepard, then a young man not quite twenty-nine years of age, set sail from the east coast of England with the purpose of chancing the hazards of what would practically be a winter voyage to New England. The sailing of the vessel on which he embarked had been announced several weeks before this, but various circumstances had detained her, and notwithstanding the fact that if one should make the voyage at that time of the year the passage to Boston could not be accomplished before the latter part of December, still it was determined by her owners to accept for the crew and the passengers the peril, the discomfort, and the suffering which would necessarily attend the trip, and for their craft the hazard of a winter approach to the dangerous New England coast. On the sixteenth of October, therefore, the vessel was permitted to sail from Harwich, having on board amongst others Thomas Shepard, his wife, and their infant son. That Shepard should have been willing to incur the exposure of such a voyage as this, is strong testimony to the peril of the situation in which he was then placed in England. Driven from pillar to post he had, notwithstanding his youth, become a marked man, and it was not only evident that he could not pursue his profession in England without sacrificing the tenets to which he was especially attached, but it was even probable that he might be punished for having disobeyed orders not to preach which had been given to him personally by Archbishop Laud, when Bishop of London, several years before. He had only been able of late to practise the functions of his office in remote districts, and if he ventured into parts where he was known he was obliged to exercise great discretion and remain in partial concealment. It was under the pressure of these circumstances that he sailed from Harwich, anticipating perhaps a voyage full of peril, but certainly without thought that even before he should be out of sight of land he would plunge into a violent storm which would utterly disable the ship and compel him three days thereafter to abandon her at Yarmouth. The experience of these three days was full of horror, and his sermons in after years bear evidence of the im |