John Endicott sailed from Weymouth in the ship Abigail, Henry Gauder, Master, with full powers to act for the Company.  The new Dorchester was founded, and soon afterwards four “prudent and honest men” went out from it and founded Salem.  John White procured a patent and royal charter for them also, which was sealed on March 4th, 1629.  It seemed the irony of fate that on the same day 147 years afterwards Washington should open fire upon Boston from the Dorchester heights in the American War of Independence.

A second Dorchester was founded in America, probably by settlers from the second Dorchester in England—­a large village near which we had passed as we walked through Oxfordshire, where in the distance could be seen a remarkable hill known as Dorchester Clump.  Although it had been a Roman town, the city where afterwards St. Birinus, the Apostle of Wessex, set up his episcopal throne from 634 to 707, the head of the See of Wessex, it was now only a village with one long street, and could not compare with its much larger neighbour in Dorset.  Its large ancient church, with a fine Jesse window, gave the idea of belonging to a place once of much greater size.  The “hands across the sea” between the two Dorchesters have never been separated, but the pilgrims now come in the opposite direction, thousands of Americans visiting Dorchester and its antiquities; we heard afterwards that the American Dorset had been presented with one of the tessellated pavements dug up from a Roman villa in what we might call “Dorchester, Senior,” in England, and that a memorial had been put up in the porch of Dorchester Church inscribed as follows: 

In this Porch lies the body of the Rev. John White, M.A., of New College, Oxford.  He was born at Christmas 1575.  For about forty years he was Rector of this Parish, and also of Holy Trinity, Dorchester.  He died here July 21st, 1648.  A man of great godliness, good scholarship, and wonderful ability.  He had a very strong sway in this town.  He greatly forwarded the migration to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where his name lives in unfading remembrance.

[Illustration:  STATUE OF WILLIAM BARNES.]

Another clergyman, named William Barnes, who was still living, had become famous by writing articles for the Gentleman’s Magazine and poems for the Dorset County Chronicle, and had published a book in 1844 entitled Poems of Rural Life in Dorset Dialect, some of which were of a high order.  They were a little difficult for us to understand readily, for these southern dialects did not appeal to us.  After he died a statue was erected to his memory, showing him as an aged clergyman quaintly attired in caped cloak, knee-breeches, and buckled shoes, with a leather satchel strung over his shoulder and a stout staff in his hand.  One of his poems referred to a departed friend of his, and a verse in it was thought so applicable to himself that it was inscribed on his monument: