Also sence G. Ffox departure William Edmondson
is arrived at this Island, who having given out a paper to all in
authority, which, my wife having copied, I have here inclosed presented
thee therewith." Books and manuscripts were not all. Coddington was also
glad to bestow on Winthrop any wandering tediousness in the flesh that
came to hand. "I now understand of John Stubbs freedom to visit thee
(with the said Jo: B.) he is a larned man, as witness the battle
door[145] on 35 languages,"--a terrible man this, capable of inflicting
himself on three dozen different kindreds of men. It will be observed
that Coddington, with his "thou desireths," is not quite so well up in
the grammar of his thee-and-thouing as my Lord Coke. Indeed, it is rather
pleasant to see that in his alarm about "the enemy," in 1673, he
backslides into the second person plural. If Winthrop ever looked over
his father's correspondence, he would have read in a letter of Henry
Jacie the following dreadful example of retribution: "The last news we
heard was that the Bores in Bavaria slew about 300 of the Swedish forces
& took about 200 prisoners, of which they put out the eyes of some & cut
out the tonges of others & so sent them to the King of Sweden, which
caused him to lament bytterly for an hour.
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