the recognized church however, and therefore lacked the
political dignities of a freeman; although his intimate relations with
Master Joseph Rowlandson, and his personal connection with the earlier
cases of church discipline in Lancaster, sufficiently attest the
austerity of his puritanism. Doubtless Governor John Winthrop in his
hasty and harsh dictum respecting the Nashaway planters, classed John
Prescott among those "corrupt in judgment." But it must be remembered
that in Winthrop's visionary commonwealth there was no room for liberty
of conscience. All were esteemed corrupt in judgment or even profane
whose religious beliefs, when tested all about by the ecclesiastic
callipers, proved not to have been cast in the doctrinal mould
prescribed by the self-sanctified founders of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony. No known fact in any way warrants even the conjecture that
Prescott was not a sincere Christian earnestly pursuing his own
convictions of duty, without fear and without reproach.

Prescott's mechanical skill and business ability had more than a local
reputation. In 1667, we find him contracting with the authorities of
Groton, to erect "a good and sufficient corne mill or mills, and the
same to finish so as may be fitting to grind the corne of the said
Towne." ... For the fulfillment of this agreement he received five
hundred and twenty acres of land, and mill and lands were exempted from
taxation for twenty years. Assistance towards the building of the mill
were also promised to the amount of "two days worke of a man for every
house lott or family within the limitts of the said Towne, and at such
time or times to be done or performed, as the said John Prescott shall
see meete to call for the same, vpon reasonable notice given." The
covenant was fulfilled by the completion of a mill at Nonacoiacus, then
in the southern part of Groton. The mill site is now in Harvard.
Prescott's youngest son, Jonas, was the first miller. The history of the
old mill is obscured by the shadows of two hundred years, but a bright
gleam of romantic tradition concerning the first miller is warm with
human interest now. Perhaps at points the romantic may infringe upon the
historic, but:

_Se non e vero,
E ben trovato._

Down by the green meadows of Sudbury there dwelt a bewitchingly fair
maiden, the musical dissyllables of whose name were often upon the lips
of the young men in all the country round about, and whose smile could
awaken