and order as it showed itself to the Prelatical party. He had been at Oxford and would have graduated, but for his own and his father's unwillingness that he should take the oath of conformity required, and in the midst of his daily labor, he still hoped privately to become one of that ministry, who were to New England what the House of Lords represented to the old. Prepossessing in appearance, with a singularly mild and gentle manner, he made friends on all sides, and in a short time came to be in great favor with Governor Dudley, whose daughter Mercy was then nearly the marriagable age of the time, sixteen. The natural result followed, and Mercy Dudley, in 1641, became Mercy Woodbridge, owning that name for fifty years, and bearing, like most Puritan matrons, many children, with the well marked traits that were also part of the time.
The young couple settled quietly at Newbury, but his aspiration was well known and often discussed by the many who desired to see the churches increased with greater speed. Dudley was one of the most earnest workers in this direction, but there is a suggestion that the new son-in-law's capacity for making a good bargain had influenced his feelings, and challenged the admiration all good New Englanders have felt from the beginning for any "fore handed" member of their community. This, however, was only a weakness among many substantial virtues which gave him a firm place in the memory of his parishioners. But the fact that after he resigned his ministry he was recorded as "remarkably blest in private estate," shows some slight foundation for the suggestion, and gives solid ground for Dudley's special interest in him.
