Page 6450751 distinkly. robert may have been a good drummer, but he proved to be a most reprehensible and disreputable citizen; in the local court records of august,, we find a full report of an astounding occurrence in which he played an important part. ten men, who avere nearlyall sea faring men, gay, rollicking sailors, went to bassctts house and asked for strong drink. the magistrates had endeavored zealously, and in the main successfully, to prevent all intoxication in the community, and had forbidden the sale of liquor save in very small quantities. the church drummer, however, wickedly unmindful of his honored calling, furnished to the sailors six quarts of strong liquor, with which they all,host and visitors, got prodigiously drunk and correspondingly noisy. the court record says: the miscarriage continued till betwixt tenn and eleven of the clock, to the great provocation of god, disturbance of the peace, and to such a height of disorder that strangers wondered at it. in the midst of
the carousal the master of the pinace called the boatswain brother loggerheads. this must have been a particularly insulting epithet, which no respectable boatswain could have been expected quietly to endure, for at once the two men fell fast to wrestling, then to blowes and their in grew to that feircnes that the master of the pinnace thought the boatswain would have puled out his eies; and they toumbled on the ground down the hill into the creeke and mire shamefully wallowing their in. in his pain and terror the master called out, hoe, the watch hoe, the watch the watch made hast and for the present stopped the disorder, but in his rage and distemper the boatswain fell a swearinge wounds and hart as if he were not only angry with men but would provoke the high and blessed god. the master of the pinnace, being freed from his fellow combatant, returned to bassets house perhaps to tell his taleof woe, perhaps to get more liquor and was assailed by the drummer with amazing words of anger and
distemper used by drunken companions; in short, he was erey offensive, his noyes and oathes being hearde to the other side of the creeke. for aiding and abetting this noisy and disgraceful spree, and also for partaking in it, drummer basset was fined, which must have been more than his yearly salary, and in disgrace, and possibly in disgust, quitted drumming the new haven good people to meeting and moved his residence to stamford, doubtless to the relief and delight of both magistrates and people of the former town. another means of notification of the hour for religious service was by theuse of a flag, often in addition to the sound of the drum or bell. thus inplymouth, in the selectmen were ordered to procure a flagg to be put out at the ringing of the first bell, and taken in when the last bell was rung. in sutherland also a flag was used as a means of announcement of meeting time, and an old goody was paid ten shillings a year for tending the flagg. mr. gosse, in his
early bells of massachusetts, gives a full andinteresting account of the church bells of the rst colonial towns in that state. lechford, in his plaine dealing, wrote in that they came together in boston on the lords day by the wringing of a bell, and it is thought that that bell was a hand bell. the first bells, for the lack of bell towers, were sometimes hung on trees by the side of the meeting houses, to the great amazement and distress of the indians, who regarded them with superstitious dread, thinking to paraphrase herberts beautiful line when the bell did chimet was devils music; but more frequently the bells were hung in a belfry or bell turret or bellcony, and from this belfry depended a long bell rope quite to the floor; and thus in the very centre of the church the sexton stood when he rung the summons for lire or for meeting. this rope was of course directly in front of the pulpit; and jonathan edwards, who was devoid of gestures and looked always straight before him when preaching, was
jokingly said to have looked off the bell rope, when it fell with a crash in the middle of his church.at the first sound of the drum or horn or bell the town inhabitants issued from their houses in desent order, man and wife walking first, and the children in quiet procession after them. often a man servant and a maid walked on either side of the heads of the family. in some communities the congregation waited outside the church door until the minister and his wife arrived and passed into the house; then the church attendants followed, the loitering boys always contriving to scuffle noisily in from the horse sheds at the last moment, making much scraping and clatter with their heavy bootson the sanded
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