Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

18 SPRINGFIELD, 1 6.36-1 SS 6.
it, we tiiid the grouudwork of our New England town-meeting, or
rather the ideas upon which our forefathers w^orked, and fi'oni which
they perfected their scheme of local government. The English
parish was a church district at the time we treat, organized with
sundr}' privileges of local civil government. The local rates and
taxes were imposed by the English parish. Once a year the English
rector would " perambulate " the bounds of the parish to confirm
" Cursed be he which
its limits and to repeat the ancient anathema :
translateth the bounds and doles of his neighbor." The vestry
meeting was the parish gathering, in which highways, sanitary
matters, church and poor rates, were all attended to by vote, — a
suffrage based upon material possessions. One of the most impor-
tant offices filled by the vestry was that of church-warden, these elec-
tions sometimes causing great excitement. A warden was both a
civil and religious officer, and from the English conception of this
office came the New England " Select Townsman," as one will readily
see upon comparing the duties of both. Mr. Pynchon was one of
the wardens of the parish at Springfield, England, and upon the
Agawam and Springfield town-meetings we see resting the shadow of
the English vestry meeting.
It is a common remark that the advance in civilization is ac-
companied by increasingly complicated codes and statutes ; but we
will see upon opening a book of New England town records of the
seventeenth century that the complexity of our present statute law is
technical and incidental, the tendency all along having been toward
simplicity and a broadening of principle. At first, a man could in
effect do nothing but what was permitted hhn by legislation ;
now, he
can do everything except what is prohibited. This is the case broadly
stated.
But in reference to Agawam individually it may be said, with some
local pride, that the hard rules of the Bay were materially modified
from the beginning. We had here little or no religious persecu-
tion, no eastern disciplinary splitting of noses, clamping of the tongue