eminent merchants, military officers, and mates of vessels, and their wives and daughters monopolized the epithet “Mrs.”  Mr. Josiah Plastow, when he had stolen four baskets of corn from the Indians, was degraded into plain Josiah.  “Mr.” seems to have meant simply “My Sir,” and the clergy were often called “Sir” merely, a title given also to college graduates, on Commencement programmes, down to the time of the Revolution.  And so strong was the Puritan dislike to the idolatry of saints’ names, that the Christian Apostles were sometimes designated as Sir Paul, Sir Peter, and Sir James.

In coming to the private affairs of the Puritan divines, it is humiliating to find that anxieties about salary are of no modern origin.  The highest compensation I can find recorded is that of John Higginson in 1671, who had L160 voted him “in country produce,” which he was glad, however, to exchange for L120 in solid cash.  Solid cash included beaver-skins, black and white wampum, beads, and musket-balls, value one farthing.  Mr. Woodbridge in Newbury at this same time had L60, and Mr. Epes preached in Salem for twenty shillings a Sunday, half in money and half in provisions.  Holy Mr. Cotton used to say that nothing was cheap in New England but milk and ministers.  Down to 1700, Increase Mather says, most salaries were less than L100, which he thinks “might account for the scanty harvests enjoyed by our farmers.”  He and his son Cotton both tell the story of a town where “two very eminent ministers were only allowed L30 per annum” and “the God who will not be mocked made them lose L300 worth of cattle that year.”  The latter also complains that the people were very willing to consider the ministers the stars, rather than the mere lamps, of the churches, provided they, like the stars, would shine without earthly contributions.

He also calls the terms of payment, in one of his long words, “Synecdotical Pay,”—­in allusion to that rhetorical figure by which a part is used for the whole.  And apparently various causes might produce this Synecdoche.  For I have seen an anonymous “Plea for Ministers of the Gospel,” in 1706, which complains that “young ministers have often occasion in their preaching to speak things offensive to some of the wealthiest people in town, on which occasion they may withhold a considerable part of their maintenance.”  It is a comfort to think how entirely this source of discomfort, at least, is now eradicated from the path of the clergy; and it is painful to think that there ever was a period when wealthy parishioners did not enjoy the delineation of their own sins.