The Two Towers: Main

PROLOGUE



        The ships rocked with impatience in the muddy river at the wide mouth of the Thames.

Eight ships there were--and ready to sail on the morrow.

It was April of 1637. Sir Matthew Boynton sighed with relief that the long winter of waiting was over. At last he and his "great family" of eight sons and four daughters, of whom he had written to Governor Winthrop, were ready to begin their journey to the new England.

Not without nostalgia did Sir Matthew contemplate leaving England, where his ancestors had lived in the ancient Yorkshire village of Boynton since before the time of the Norman invasion. It was almost with embarrassment that he remembered his position as commander of a troop of royal horses and as governor of the castle during the reign of Charles I. Now those days were over. No longer would his daughters serve as ladies in the Queen's Court. And his title of baronet, conferred by King James not twenty years before, would give few prerogatives in the new country.

So much he must now forego by joining the fortunes of the Puritans, for whose cause he was so strongly sympathetic.

Sir Matthew had been preparing for this journey since 1630, when John Winthrop had landed in Salem with the priceless Charter which permitted the settlement of a territory "from sea to sea."