The younger John went, on graduating, to London, to fit himself for the law.  His name is found on the books as admitted to the Inner Temple in 1624.  He appears early to have cherished some matrimonial purposes which did not work felicitously.  Not liking his profession, he turned his thoughts toward the sea.  He obtained a secretaryship in the naval service, and joined the expedition under the Duke of Buckingham, designed to relieve the French Protestants at Rochelle, in 1627.  He afterwards made an Oriental tour, of the stages of which we have some account in his letters, in 1628-9, from Leghorn, Constantinople, etc.  He was thwarted in a purpose to visit Jerusalem, and returned to England, by Holland.  Notwithstanding the industrious fidelity of his father as a letter-writer, the son received no tidings from home during his whole absence of nearly fifteen months.  What a contrast with our times!

Before undertaking this Oriental tour, the younger John had had proposals made to him, which seem to have engaged his own inclinations, to connect himself with Endecott’s New-England enterprise.  He wrote to consult the wishes of his father on the subject; but that father, who in less than two years was to find himself pledged to a more comprehensive scheme, involving a life-long exile in that far-off wilderness, dissuaded his son from the premature undertaking.  It does not appear that the father had as yet presented to his mind the possibility of any such step.  Yet, from the readiness which marked his own earnest and complete sympathy in the enterprise when first we find him concerned in it, we must infer that he had much previous acquaintance and sympathy with the early New-England adventurers from the moment that a religious spirit became prominent in their fellowship.  He was a man who undertook no great work without the most careful deliberation, and a slow maturing of his decision.

During the absence of John at the East, many interesting and serious incidents occurred in the personal experience and in the domestic relations of his father, which doubtless helped the preparation of his spirit for the critical event of his life.  He had that severe and threatening illness in London already referred to.  We have many letters covering the period, filled with matter over which, as so full of what is common to the human heart in all time, we linger with consenting sympathy.  A wayward and unconverted son, Henry by name, caused his father an anxiety which we see struggling painfully with parental affection and a high-toned Christian aim for all the members of his family.  The son’s course indicated rather profitlessness and recklessness than vice.  He connected himself with an enterprise at Barbadoes.  He drew heavily on his father’s resources for money, and returned him some tobacco, which the father very frankly writes to him was “very ill-conditioned, foul, & full of stalks, & evil-colored.”  He came over in the same expedition, though not in