the trust. Mention is made, either in the records or in Leverett's Diary, of students from the "Colony of Nox," or in more guarded phrase as "being supposed to be a scholar belonging to the Colony formerly called the Colony of Nox," in 1694, in 1716 and in 1721. Later than this I have found no reference to the Colony of Nox. Founded in the Records of Harvard College in 1671, it lived in the same seclusion until 1721 and then for a time disappeared from history. In 1862 allusion was made to it by Mr. Sibley in a note to a paper which was published in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. No attempt was made at that time to follow up its history.

At first sight it may seem strange that the College officials should have perpetuated this blunder for so many years. It must be borne in mind, however, that they were extremely anxious to have those from whom they might hope for gifts understand that trusts would be administered according to the intentions of their founders. They met with this phrase in what they supposed to be a correct transcript of Penoyer's will. Penoyer had relatives in America and evidently had friends in the Colony of New Haven. In describing the Colony he had apparently used a name with which they were not familiar, but it seemed as though this alternative title was used for designating more particularly a colony which had but recently lost its identity. In 1662 the charter granted to Connecticut had comprehended the Colony of New Haven. The very

circumstances which led Penoyer to describe the Colony as having now or of late the title with which he was familiar, rather than by the new name to which he had not become accustomed, contributed to sustain the error. It does not require any great stretch of the imagination to bring before our eyes the scene of the discussions in which Increase Mather, Thomas Brattle, Leverett, Wadsworth and Henry Flynt participated, in seeking for an explanation of the phrase. The doubt whether it meant anything and the

preponderance of the feeling that it was wiser after all to recognize it, is apparent in the records and in the official correspondence of the College.

Without being able to assert positively how and when the error was discovered, it may be stated as probable that when Henry Flynt compiled his list of benefactors of the College, which was completed in 1722, he examined the certified copy of the will which had been transmitted from England, and with the matter fresh in his mind from assignments by the Corporation of the Penoyer annuity in 1721, solved the question of the origin of the Colony of Nox. The coincidence of the disappearance from the records of allusion to the Colony of Nox, with his work in overhauling the College papers, points almost conclusively to Flynt as the discoverer of the error.

The fact that there was a correct copy of the will, or at least of that portion of it relating to the College, is made certain by a reference in Dr. Andrew Eliot's Donation Book, to "an attested copy of Mr. Penoyer's will, MS. papers No. 25." The copy of the will extended upon the pages of the Donation Book purports to have been made from this attested copy. The phrase in question is correctly transcribed and reads "now or late." Since the compilation of that book the papers of the College have been assorted and bound in volumes. The attested copy of the Penoyer will has disappeared, but the correct transcript in the Donation Book furnishes evidence that the error originated either in the Treasurer's office or in the records themselves.

The clue which enabled me to unravel the mystery of the "Colony of Nox," was gained by a marginal entry "now or of late called New Haven Colony," abreast of the words, "Colony of Nox or of late called New Haven Colony," in one of the College books. Similar explanatory entries have been made against several of these entries which contain allusions to the Colony of Nox. These marginal

entries would be in themselves a sufficient guard against the resurrection of the error, did they include all allusions in the records to the Colony of Nox, or were they in themselves so entered as necessarily to attract the attention of the reader. As a matter of fact, however, there are several allusions to the Colony of Nox, against which no marginal notations have been made, and it is also true that no marginal notation would necessarily attract the attention of a searcher of the records. Throughout this period, the margins of the College books are filled with notations. They constitute a sort of topical index, the use of which a person making a thorough analysis of the records would naturally reject. For that reason it is perhaps as well that. the history of the rise and fall of the Colony of Nox should be put on record.

Prof. FRANKLIN B. DEXTER read some letters of peculiar interest, and Mr. REUBEN COLTON presented an abstract of a diary kept by Mr. Edward H. Thompson during an exploring expedition in Yucatan. The Society, with thanks to Prof. DEXTER and Mr. COLTON, requested that the letters and the diary be furnished for the use of the Committee of Publication.

The meeting was then dissolved.

JOHN D. WASHBURN,

Recording Secretary.

REPORT OF THE COUNCIL.

THE report of Mr. Paine, our Treasurer for twenty-four years, giving, as usual, a detailed statement of the financial operations of the Society, and the present condition of the various funds, shows that from the total income a dividend of three per cent. has been carried to each fund. The Librarian, who now completes a term of twenty-one years of faithful service, of which fifteen years were passed as an assistant to Dr. Haven, tells the interesting story of what has been done in his department during the past six months. The reports of these two officers are presented as forming a part of the report of the Council.

We have to record, at this time, the death of the only member of the Society who, to our knowledge, has passed away since the date of our last meeting,- Pliny Earle Chase, LL.D., Professor at Haverford College, Pennsylvania, who was elected into this Society in October, 1863. A memoir of Prof. Chase has been prepared by our associate in the Council, Samuel S. Green, A.M.

A glance at the development of some of the Great Charitable Trusts now in existence, especially at those of our mother country, necessarily carries in its train something more than a mere statement of figures, or the trial-balance of a bookkeeper. The most matter-of-fact penny-a-liner who should be sent to "interview" that striking character and practical philanthropist, Sir Moses Montefiore, could not bring away from the atmosphere of his imposing presence merely the bare statistics of the cash in his pocket-book and the array of

his investments in land, stocks and the public funds. So he who uses such material as may be available for ascertaining the present condition of the great charitable, or semi-charitable institutions of Great Britain, will,-especially if he has ever made a personal visit to any of them,-experience that charm and inspiration of which Prof. Lowell recently spoke so eloquently,1 and which, he says, he never felt so acutely as in those gray seclusions of the college quadrangles and cloisters at Oxford and Cambridge, conscious with venerable associations, and whose very stones seem happier for being there."

The charities of England have been built up in great measure from grants of land made originally by the pious and charitable. Indeed, so far back as the Norman Conquest, the church was in possession of lands, so given it for the most part, amounting to nearly three-tenths of the whole property of the country. At that time, of course, the great mass of personal property now existing in the form of consols, stocks, bonds and the like, was unknown. This land, held in great measure under feudal tenure or the surviving customs and relics of that tenure, has been a constant cause of legislation down to the present day; and the history of its ownership is both curious and interesting to the American, who buys and sells his city lot or his pleasant farm as free from incumbrance, for the most part, as he does his horse and cow, or his securities at the Stock Exchange. True it is, however, that even here a "Concord philosopher" might find that we are not such absolute owners of our land as we may seem; that the bottom ownership-dominium directum" of the broad acres which we may have acquired is really in the great body politic of which we are members, leaving only the "dominium utile" to ourselves; that although we are said to own the "fee," some of the original meaning of that word still attaches to

1 Oration delivered at the 250th anniversary of Harvard College, Nov. 8, 1886.