though their parents were paying for better fare. He appears to have admitted the evil, but threw the blame upon his wife. The court found him guilty. At first he denied his guilt. He was put in care of a marshal for safe keeping, and, on the following day, the court was informed that he had repented in tears. In the open court "he made a very solid, wise, eloquent, and serious (seeming) confession." The court was so much moved and pleased by this act of contrition that they only censured him and fined him twenty pounds and ordered the same amount to be paid to Briscoe. The church intended to "deal with him," but he fled to the Piscataqua settlements. He was apprehended, and promised to return to Cambridge, but finally escaped and fled, on a boat, to Virginia.
The college was named for the Reverend John Harvard, who came to this country from England in 1637, settled in Charlestown, and died the following year. He left a legacy, including his library, to the new institution of learning, which was a princely benefaction for the time. As a suitable recognition for this first large donation, the institution was called Harvard College. The exact place of Mr. Harvard's burial is unknown. It was somewhere "about the foot of Town Hill." It was in the old burial-ground near the old prison in Charlestown, in all probability, and the monument to his memory, if not over his grave, is likely very near it. The inscriptions on this monument explain the time and cause of its erection. On the eastern side of the shaft, looking toward the land of his birth and education, we read:—
"On the twenty-sixth day of September, A.D. 1828, this Stone was erected by the Graduates of the University of Cambridge in honor of its founder, who died at Charlestown, on the twenty-sixth day of September, a.d. 1638."
This is in his mother-tongue. On the side looking toward the seat of learning which bears his name is the following inscription, in classic Latin:
"In piam et perpetuam memoriam Johannis Harvardii, annis fere ducentis post obitum ejus peractis, Academiae quae est Cantabrigiae Nov-Anglorum alumni, ne diutius vir de literis nostris optime meritus sine monumento quamvis humili jaceret, hunc lapidem ponendum curaverunt." The following is a literal translation:—
"In pious and perpetual remembrance of John Harvard, nearly two hundred years after his death, the alumni of the University at Cambridge, in New England, have erected this stone, that one who deserves the highest honors from our literary men may be no longer without a monument, however humble."
Edward Everett delivered the address at the dedication of the monument. The closing passage of his oration is as follows:—
"While the College which he founded shall continue to the latest posterity, a monument not unworthy of the most honored name, we trust that this plain memorial also will endure; and, while it guides the dutiful votary to the spot where his ashes are deposited, will teach to those who survey it the supremacy of intellectual and moral desert, and encourage them, too, by a like munificence, to aspire to a name as bright as that which stands engraven on its shaft,—
'Clarum et venerabile nomen
Gentibus, et multum nostrae quod proderat urbi.'"
