in 1727, has a notice of Thomas Lawson, whom he describes as minister of Denton in the county of Norfolk, educated at Katherine Hall in Cambridge, and afterwards chosen “to a fellowship in St. John’s.  He was a man of parts, but had no good utterance.  He was the father of the unhappy Mr. Deodat Lawson, who came hither from New England.”  With all his abilities, learning, and eloquence, he disappears, after the re-publication of his Salem Village sermon in London, in the dark, impenetrable cloud of this expression, “the unhappy Mr. Deodat Lawson.”  Of the melancholy fate implied in the language of Calamy, I have not been able to obtain the slightest information.

The troubles that covered the whole period, since the beginning of Mr. Bayley’s ministry, had led to the neglect and derangement of the entire organization of the Village, and resulted in the loss of what little opportunities for education might otherwise have been provided.  So great was this evil regarded, that the old town felt it necessary to interpose; and we find it voted Jan. 24, 1682, that “Lieutenant John Putnam is desired, and is hereby empowered, to take care that the law relating to the catechising of children and youth be duly attended at the Village.”  He is also “desired to have a diligent care that all the families do carefully and constantly attend the due education of their children and youth according to law.”  We cannot but feel that the man who was ready to fight the “Topsfield men” in the woods—­who, when they asked him, “What, by violence?” answered, with axe in hand, “Ay, by violence,” and who figured in the manner described in the scene with Mr. Burroughs—­was a singular person to intrust with the charge of “catechising the children and youth.”  But those were queer times, and he was a queer character.  He had always been a church-member; and, to the day of his death, church and prayer meetings were more frequently held at his house than in any other.  He was a rough man, but he was no hypocrite.  He was in the front of every encounter; but he was tolerant, too, of difference of opinion.  When, at one time, the contests of the Village were at their height, and two committees were raised representing the two conflicting parties, he was at the head of one, and his eldest son (Jonathan) of the other.  Their opposition does not seem to have alienated them.  While I have found it necessary to hold him up, in some of his actions, for condemnation, there were many good points about him; although he was not the sort of man that would be likely, in our times, to be selected to execute the functions of a Sunday-school teacher.