![]() He lived with the Wife of his Youth till 1717, upwards of forty years and the following year married Mrs. Deborah Clark, by whom he had five children, three whereof died in infancy the other two lived to be married,-the youngest to the late Honourable Lieutenant-Governor Tailer, who quickly departed, without issue the other to Edward Lyde, Esq., by whom she had five children, two of whom dying young, three only are now surviving, a son and two daughters. He was born in 1653, arrived at Boston in New England in 1674, and conceiving a Love to this Country, resolved to settle here -and accordingly married the following year, Mrs. He was the youngest of one and twenty children, and one of the sixteen that have sometimes followed their pious father to the Place of publick Worship. His mother being of the noted family of the Juxons. Richard Byfield, the laborious, faithful pastor of Long-Ditton in Surrey, one of the Divines in the famous Westminster Assembly. I quote first from the obituary notice which appeared in the Weekly News-letter, 14 June 1733: But if that is the verdict, the fact is itself of considerable interest, for Byfield, was a man of prominence and eminence in his time, as you will see from a brief sketch of his life. For example, I intended at first to title this essay “Nathaniel Byfield, a Remarkable Unknown,” but feared for a time that the only effect of investigation would be to convert the man into an unremarkable known. And indeed, the historian who does concentrate on Nathaniel Byfield will wonder whether that should be her final verdict on him. ![]() This of course may be said of many figures in the past, and no doubt some of those richly deserve the obscurity they enjoy. History as written has not exactly ignored him, 296 but it tends to touch him lightly, glance off, and settle on men believed, apparently, more worthy of the historian’s attention. Nathaniel Byfield is a man mentioned by many, known, so far as I can tell, to none. Under the circumstances, let us just say that it has been a most rewarding experience. Were this essay not to be published by a Learned Society, I would say that I have had a helluva good time with Nathaniel Byfield. And the journey is, or has been for me, most enjoyable. Thus, however little that action owed to Byfield-he was, for example, certainly nothing so grand as a catalyst-still, if we follow him we arrive at it. To use a modern expression, Byfield was where the action was. “Byfield the ubiquitous” he seemed to me, with the paradoxical consequence that although the world of legal history has hardly been impoverished by Byfield’s absence, it may be enriched by his presence. It was this continual encountering of the man in the course of investigation of what I consider to be significant themes in the colony’s legal history that piqued my curiosity about him. BLACK Nathaniel Byfield, 1653–1733ĪS I explored various areas of eighteenth-century Massachusetts legal history, I ran into Nathaniel Byfield at every turn. Sources for the Study of Law in Colonial Massachusetts at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MassachusettsīARBARA A.Sources for the Study of Law in Colonial Massachusetts at the Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Sources for the Study of Law in Colonial Massachusetts at the Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts.Sources for the Study of Law in Colonial Massachusetts at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.A “magistracy fit and necessary”: A Guide to the Massachusetts Court System.A Guide to the Court Records of Early Massachusetts.Court Records as Sources for Historical Writing.“Immortality brought to Light”: An Overview of Massachusetts Colonial Court Records.The American Revolution and the Emergence of Modern Doctrines of Federalism and Conflict of Laws.Justinian in Braintree: John Adams, Civilian Learning, and Legal Elitism, 1758–1775.Massachusetts Lawyers on the Eve of the American Revolution: The State of the Profession.Law and Authority to the Eastward: Maine Courts, Magistrates, and Lawyers, 1690–1730.Legal Literature in Colonial Massachusetts.Criminal Practice in Provincial Massachusetts.The Transformation of the Law of Poverty in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts.John Clark, Esq., Justice of the Peace, 1667–1728.Lay Judges: Magistrates and Justices in Early Massachusetts.Thomas Lechford and the Earliest Lawyering in Massachusetts, 1638–1641.Introduction: The “Countenance of Authoritie”.Volume 62: Law in Colonial Massachusetts, 1630–1800.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |