relations with Master Joseph Rowlandson, and his personal connection with the earlier cases of church discipline in Lancaster, sufficiently attest the austerity of his puritanism.  Doubtless Governor John Winthrop in his hasty and harsh dictum respecting the Nashaway planters, classed John Prescott among those “corrupt in judgment.”  But it must be remembered that in Winthrop’s visionary commonwealth there was no room for liberty of conscience.  All were esteemed corrupt in judgment or even profane whose religious beliefs, when tested all about by the ecclesiastic callipers, proved not to have been cast in the doctrinal mould prescribed by the self-sanctified founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  No known fact in any way warrants even the conjecture that Prescott was not a sincere Christian earnestly pursuing his own convictions of duty, without fear and without reproach.

Prescott’s mechanical skill and business ability had more than a local reputation.  In 1667, we find him contracting with the authorities of Groton, to erect “a good and sufficient corne mill or mills, and the same to finish so as may be fitting to grind the corne of the said Towne.” ...  For the fulfillment of this agreement he received five hundred and twenty acres of land, and mill and lands were exempted from taxation for twenty years.  Assistance towards the building of the mill were also promised to the amount of “two days worke of a man for every house lott or family within the limitts of the said Towne, and at such time or times to be done or performed, as the said John Prescott shall see meete to call for the same, vpon reasonable notice given.”  The covenant was fulfilled by the completion of a mill at Nonacoiacus, then in the southern part of Groton.  The mill site is now in Harvard.  Prescott’s youngest son, Jonas, was the first miller.  The history of the old mill is obscured by the shadows of two hundred years, but a bright gleam of romantic tradition concerning the first miller is warm with human interest now.  Perhaps at points the romantic may infringe upon the historic, but: 

  Se non e vero,
  E ben trovato.

Down by the green meadows of Sudbury there dwelt a bewitchingly fair maiden, the musical dissyllables of whose name were often upon the lips of the young men in all the country round about, and whose smile could awaken voiceless poetry in the heart of the most prosaic Puritan swain.  There is little of aristocratic sound in Mary Loker’s name, but her parents sat on Sunday at the meeting house in a “dignified” pew, and were rich in fields and cattle.  Whether pushed by pride of land or pride of birth, in their plans and aspirations, this daughter was predestinated to enhance the family dignity by an aristocratic alliance.  In Colonial days a maiden who added a handsome prospective dowry to her personal witchery was rare indeed, and Mary Loker had, coming from far and near, inflammable suitors perpetually burning at her shrine.  From among