They arrived in that month—the dreariest of the New England year—on the banks of the river which washes in his sweet and cheerful course the foot of the hill on. which we are assembled. They proceeded to purchase of Masconomo, the Sagamore of Agawam, by a deed to him, Winthrop, a portion of the territory which composes the present corporation of Ipswich; and there remained without, I imagine, any considerable addition to their number, without any regularly organized church, or stated preaching, or municipal character, until May, 1634. At that time the Rev. Thomas Parker, the pupil of the learned Archbishop Usher of Dublin, and about one hundred more, men, women, and children, came over from “the Bay” and took up their abode on the spot thus made ready for them. In August, 1634, the first church was organized; and on this day two hundred years ago the town was incorporated. With that deep filial love of England and the English, which neither persecution, nor exile, nor distance, nor the choice of another and dearer home, nor the contemplation of the rapidly revealing and proud destinies of the New World, ever entirely plucked from the hearts of all the Colonists down to the War of Independence, they took the name of -Ipswich from the Ipswich of the east coast of England, the capital of the county of Suffolk, and the birthplace of Cardinal Wolsey. And thus and by these was begun the civil and ecclesiastical establishment and history of Ipswich. You have done well in this way to commemorate an event of so much interest to you. It is well thus filially, thus piously, to wipe away the dust, if you may, which two hundred years have gathered upon the tombs of the fathers. It is well that you have gathered yourselves together on this height; that as you stand here and look abroad upon as various and inspiring a view as the sun shines upon; as you see fields of grain bending before the light summer wind,—one harvest just now ready for the sickle, and another and a richer preparing; as you see your own flocks upon the tops and descents of the many rising hills; mowing-lands shaven by the scythe; the slow river winding between still meadows, ministering in his way to the processes of nature and of art,—losing himself at last under your eye in the sea, as life, busy or quiet, glides into immortality; as you hear peace and plenty proclaiming with 2
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