Genealogical notes of Barnstable families - citizen hylbom blog

GEN^EALOGICAL NOTES OF BARNSTABLE FAMILIES. 278
the Dutch at New York. The following quotations from his letter
to Gov. Winslow, declining the appointment, I find in Deane'a
History of Scituate
"Sir, I do unfeignedly and most ingenuously receive the
Court's valuation and estimation of me, in preferring me to such
a place. It is not below me or beneath me, (as some deem theirs
to be), but is above me, and far beyond any desert of mine ; and
had the Court been well acquainted with my insufficiency for" such
an undertaking, doubtless I should not have been in nomination
neither would it have been their wisdom to hazard the cause and
the lives of their men upon an instrument so unaccomplished for
the well management of so great a concern. So being persuaded
to myself of my own insufficiency it appears clearly and undoubtediey
unto me, that I have no call of God thereunto : for vox
populi, is not always vox Dei. Beside, it is evident unto me,
upon other considerations, I am not called of God unto this work
at this time. The estate and condition of my family is such as
will not admit of such a thing, being such as can hardly be
paralleled ; which was well know unto some : but it was not well
or friendly done as to me, nor faithfully as to the country, if
did not lay my condition before the Court. My wife, as so
they
well
known unto the whole town, is not only a weak woman, but has
so been all klong ; and now by reason of age, being sixty-seven
years and upwards, and nature decaying, so her illness grows
strongly upon her.
''Sir, I can truly say that I do not in the least waive the business
out of any discontent in my spirit arising from any former
difference : for the thought of all which is and shall be forever
buried, so as not to come in rcjaembrance : neither out of any
effeminate or dastardly spirit ; but I am as freely willing to serve
my King and my Country as any man, in what I am capable and
fitted for : but I do not understand that a man is called to serve
his country with the inevitable ruin and destruction of his own
family.
"These things being premised, I know your Honor's wisdom
and prudence to be such, that you will, upon
tion thereof, conclude that I am not called of
serious considera-
God to embrace
the call of the General Court. Sir, when I consider the Court's
act in pitching their thoughts upon me, I have many musings what
should be the reason moving them thereunto ; I conceive it cannot
be, that I should be thought to have more experience and better
abilities than others, for you, with many others, do well known,
that when I entered upon military employ, I was very raw in the
theoretic part of war, and less acquainted with the practical part
and it was not long that I sustained my place in which I had
occasion to bend my mind and thoughts that way ; but was discharged
thereof, and of other publick concerns : and therein I