e adds,--"Yet I was still very wild &
dissolute: & as years came on, my lusts grew stronger, but yet under
some restraint of my natural reason, whereby I had that command of
myself that I could turn into any form. I would, as occasion required,
write letters, &c. of mere vanity; & if occasion was, I could write
savoury & godly counsel." Seeing, however, that he was made a Justice of
the Peace when eighteen years of age, the inference is a fair one--his
own self-accusation to the contrary notwithstanding--that he was known
in his own neighborhood as a youth of extraordinary excellence of
character.

It would appear from the entries in his father's diaries that he was a
member of college some eighteen months. Why he left before completing
his course is to find its explanation for us either in the extreme
sickness before referred to as visited upon him there, or in the
agreeable "change in his condition," as the awkward and sheepish phrase
is, which immediately followed. The latter alternative leaves scope and
offers temptations for such inventiveness of fancy about details and
incidents, whys and wherefores, as the absence of all but the following
stingy revelations may justify. The good Adam, after recording, in
November, 1604, and in the ensuing March, two mysterious rides with his
son, has left, this, under date of March 28th, 1605:--"My soonne was
sollemly contracted to Mary Foorth, by Mr. Culverwell minister of Greate
Stambridge in Essex _cum consensu parentum_." Another ride into Essex,
this time by the son alone, is entered under April 9th, and then on the
16th his marriage, "_AEtatis suae 17 [annis] 3 mensibus et 4 diebus
completis_." This reads pleasantly:--"The VIIIth of May my soonne & his
wife came to Groton from London, & ye IXth I made a marriage feaste,
when Sr. Thomas Mildmay & his lady my sister were present. The same day
my sister Veysye came to me, & departed on ye 24th of Maye. My dawter
Fones came the VIIIth & departed home ye XXIIId of Maye." An
expeditious closing up, with honey-moon and marriage-feast, of an
evident love-passage, whose longer or shorter antecedents are not
revealed. The biographer leaves his readers their choice of assigning
the abrupt close of the college course of John Winthrop either to his
grievous sickness, or to his love for Mary Forth, daughter and sole heir
of John Forth, Esq., of Great Stambridge. We incline rather to the
latter alternative as the stronger one, inasmuch as