kenness, was
now ordered to wear a red D about his neck for a year" to wit, the year
1633, and thereby gave occasion to the greatest American romance, _The
Scarlet Letter_. The famous apparition of the phantom ship in New
Haven harbor, "upon the top of the poop a man standing with one hand
akimbo under his left side, and in his right hand a sword stretched out
toward the sea," was first chronicled by Winthrop under the year 1648.
This meterological {344} phenomenon took on the dimensions of a
full-grown myth some forty years later, as related, with many
embellishments, by Rev. James Pierpont, of New Haven, in a letter to
Cotton Mather. Winthrop put great faith in special providences, and
among other instances narrates, not without a certain grim
satisfaction, how "the _Mary Rose_, a ship of Bristol, of about 200
tons," lying before Charleston, was blown in pieces with her own
powder, being twenty-one barrels, wherein the judgment of God appeared,
"for the master and company were many of them profane scoffers at us
and at the ordinances of religion here." Without any effort at
dramatic portraiture or character sketching, Winthrop managed in all
simplicity, and by the plain relation of facts, to leave a clear
impression of many of the prominent figures in the first Massachusetts
immigration. In particular there gradually arises from the entries in
his diary a very distinct and diverting outline of Captain John
Underhill, celebrated in Whittier's poem. He was one of the few
professional soldiers who came over with the Puritan fathers, such as
John Mason, the hero of the Pequot War, and Miles Standish, whose
_Courtship_ Longfellow sang. He had seen service in the Low Countries,
and in pleading the privilege of his profession "he insisted much upon
the liberty which all States do allow to military officers for free
speech, etc., and that himself had spoken sometimes as freely to Count
Nassau." Captain Underhill gave the colony no end of {345} trouble,
both by his scandalous living and his heresies in religion. Having
been seduced into Familistical opinions by Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who
was banished for her beliefs, he was had up before the General Court
and questioned, among other points, as to his own report of the manner
of his conversion. "He had lain under a spirit of bondage and a legal
way for years, and could get no assurance, till, at length, as he was
taking a pipe of tobacco, the Spirit set home an absolute