Pietas in patriam the life of His Excellency Sir William Phips, Knt. late Captain…

SECT. 3.

HIS Friends earnestly solicited him to settle among them in a Plantation of the East; but he had an Unaccountable Impulse upon his Mind, persuading him, as he would privately hint unto some of them, That he was Born to Greater Matters. To come at those Greater Matters, his first Contrivance was to bind himself an Apprentice unto a Ship-Carpenter for Four Years; in which Time, he became a Master of the Trade, that once in a Vessel of more than Forty Thousand Tuns, Repaired the Ruins of the Earth. He then betook himself an Hundred and Fifty Miles further a Field, even to Boston, the chief Town of New-England; which being a Place of the most Business and Resort in those parts of the World; he expected there more commodiously to pursue the Spes Majorum & Meliorum, Hopes which had Inspired him. At Boston, where it was that he now learnt, first of all, to Read and Write; be followed his Trade for about a Year; and, by a laudable Deportment, so recommended himself, that he Married a Young Gentlewoman of Good Repute, who was the Widow of one Mr. John Hull, a well-bred Merchant, but the Daughter of one Captain Roger Spencer, a Person of good Fashion, who having suffered much damage in his Estate, by some unkind and unjust actions, which he bore with such Patience, that for fear of thereby injuring the Public, he would not seek satisfaction, Posterity might afterwards see the reward of his patience, in what Providence hath now done for one of his own Posterity. Within a little while after his Marriage, he Indented with several ⟨p. 6⟩persons in Boston, to build them a Ship at Sheeps-coat River, two or three Leagues Eastward of Kennebec; where having Launched the Ship, he also provided a Lading of Lumber to bring with him, which would have been to the advantage of all concerned. But just as the Ship was hardly finished, the barbarous Indians on that River, broke forth into an Open and Cruel War upon the English; and the miserable People, surprised by so sudden a storm of Blood, had no Refuge from the Infidels, but the Ship now finishing in the Harbour. Whereupon, he left his intended Lading behind him, and instead thereof, carried with him, his Old Neighbours and their Families, free of all Charges to Boston; So, the First Action that he did, after he was his own Man, was to Save his Fathers House, with the rest of the Neighbourhood, from Ruin;