Note 7 — INTRODUCTION.

But there is no doubt that the author was himself as far from sharing in the serious English thought of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay as he was from joining in their evangelical faith. Yet there is hardly more than one place in either of his books (Voyages, pp. 180-2) where this is offensively brought forward. It is worthy of remark, however, that Josselyn’s family, in England, was attached rather to the Puritan side. “His family connections,” says Mr. Hunter, in the letter already referred to, “appear to have been adherents to the cause of the Parliament; particularly the Harlakendens, in whose regiment a Jocelyn, named Ralph, was a chaplain.” Nor is this all. “In the year 1663,” continues the learned authority just cited, “there was a slight insurrectionary movement in the North; which was easily put down by the government, and the leaders executed. In a manuscript list of persons who were either openly engaged, or who were vehemently suspected of being favorers of the design, I find in the latter class the name of Capt. John Jossline.” This plot was not discovered till January, 1664; and our John Josselyn “departed from London,” as he says at page one of this volume, “upon an invitation of my only brother,” the 28th of May of the year previous. But, if it be possible that our author was the person intended in the manuscript list as one strongly suspected of being engaged in a design against the Royal Government, the evident uncertainty of this is too great to permit us to discredit his own exposure of his political leanings,—as in the Voyages, p. 197, where, speaking of Sir F. Gorges, he says, “And, when he was between three and fourscore years of age, did personally engage in our royal martyr’s service, and particularly in the siege of Bristow; and was plundered and imprisoned several times, by reason whereof he was discountenanced by the pretended Commissioners for Forraign Plantations,” and so forth,—or in the face of another passage to be quoted further on, in which he acknowledges “the bounty of his royal sovereigness,” to question the sincerity—which there is nothing in either of his books to throw doubt upon—of his general adhesion to the Royalist side. “The family in Hertfordshire,” says Mr. Hunter, “were nonconformists; but the spirit of nonconformity seems to have spent itself at the death of Sir Strange Jocelyn, the second baronet, who died in 1734. But we may trace the Puritan influence in the present Earl of Roden, who is a conspicuous member of the religious body in England called the Evangelical.”—Ms. ut sup.