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CHAPTER I The Web of Open-field Life O N THEtwenty-sixth of March, 1638, Peter Noyes, yeoman of the parish of Weyhill, Hampshire, gave his land back to the Lord of the Manor. No longer would he help his Hampshire neighbors erect fences around the common fields in the spring or watch the plow teams turn furrows in the rich loam. Noyes had decided. He was taking his eldest son to visit New England in the expectation of moving his family from Weyhill forever . As he stood before his fellow tenants in the courtroom of Ramridge Hall, perhaps Noyes felt a touch of sadness. His fields were just waiting for care. This was the season when the winter-sown wheat was starting to sprout, the time for spring sowing. Doubtless, the buds of the beech on Juniper Down were showing their spring red. And perhaps out of the window of the courtroom Noyescould seea stray spring lamb, nibbling on forbidden grass. Not one of the villagers in the court could have predicted Noyes's destiny. They could hardly have conceived the responsibilities involved. They might not have been surprised later to learn that Noyes was being chosen, year after year, to every major post in his new town.After all, the Noyesfamily had built up a distinguished reputation in Weyhill. Only a few years previously Peter's uncle, William, had run Ramridge Hall, while Robert Noyes,a second uncle, had managed the next largest property in the village, Blissimore Hall. The Noyes family was considered one of the leading families in the parish. But what villager could have foreseen that their neighbor was to be commissioner for the government of Massachusetts, church elder, town selectman, 4 PURITAN VILLAGE judge of small causes, and town deputy to the Massachusettslegislature? The people of Weyhill, who had seen Peter Noyes serve as juryman in their manorial court and churchwarden of their church on the hill, could have predicted that he would do well as land surveyor, road building director, grantor of timber, and fence viewer. They would have been amazed, however, and so would Noyes himself, if someone had told him, in 1638, that during the next twenty years he was to attend one hundred and twenty-nine separate official meetings in his town, to saynothing of the informal church gatherings, church services, and sessions of the Massachusetts legislature. Noyes was destined to be a founder of a New England town, a leader of men in every sense of the word. As such, he was to be responsible for over six hundred and fifty separate "orders," carrying the weight of law and often the power of life and death over his townsmen. For a yeoman from a small West Country village, this was an awesomechallenge. Peter Noyes chose this role deliberately. He was not "harried out of the land." Far from it. He took his steps cautiously but firmly; he had courage, and he had vision. He could easily have remained with the Tarrants and the other members of his own family, none of whom favored the activities of Archbishop Laud and his "popish" ceremonies. Noyes did not rush away impetuously either. Members of another Noyes family, undoubtedly related to Peter, had been deeply involved in the religious controversies of the period and had left five years previously, in 1633. Since this branch of the family lived only six miles from Weyhill in Cholderton , Wiltshire, their activitiesmust have been well known to Peter. The Cholderton Noyes family had been in the midst of the struggle over church reformation. The Reverend William Noyes, an Oxford graduate, had died in 1622,and the rectorship of the village church had gone to his son Nathan, also an Oxford Bachelor of Arts. Nathan's uncle, Robert, was a prominent yeoman in the town, as was his older brother Ephraim. But the two younger brothers had drunk deep of the Nonconformist brew, despite the fact that James had followed his father and elder brother to Oxford. Perhaps their cousin, the Reverend Thomas Parker, had fanned their rebellious spirits, for James, aged twenty-five, and Nicholas, aged eighteen, had decided to forsake Cholderton forMassachusetts. The records do not say whether these members of the family had visited Peter Noyes in Weyhill or had passed through the village on their way to their port of embarkation, London. They do state, however, that the families knew one another.1 [3.15.193.45] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 14:04...

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