recently revolted from the Pequot hegemony (Niles, History of the Indian and French Wars, ap. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. 3rd ser. vi. 155–76). The nearest Pequot fort was surprised at dawn on 26 May. The resistance was slight, and having once penetrated the stockade Mason forthwith set fire to the whole fort, forming his men in a circle outside to prevent escape. Some five hundred friendly Indians formed a larger circle in the rear. Out of about seven hundred Pequots only seven escaped butchery. The English loss was two killed and twenty wounded. Joined by a detachment from Massachusetts, Mason pursued the remnant of the offending tribe towards New York, killing and capturing a great number. The lands and persons of the few who survived in Connecticut he divided between his allies, stipulating that the very name of Pequot should become extinct. ‘By these prompt measures, a handful of whites was within a few weeks enabled to annihilate a powerful native tribe, and to secure a general peace with the Indians, which remained unbroken for forty years.’
After the war Mason settled at Saybrook, on the mouth of the Connecticut river, whence in 1659 he removed to Norwich. He was elected one of the six Connecticut magistrates on 16 April 1642, and was major-general of the colonial forces from 1638 until 1670. He undertook several diplomatic missions among the Indians. On 17 May 1660 he was elected deputy governor of Connecticut, and the choice was ratified by Charles II in 1662. He was also chief judge of the colonial county court from its organisation in 1664 until his retirement from all his offices in 1670. He died at Boston in the early part of 1672, leaving three sons and four daughters.
At the request of the general court Mason prepared a ‘Brief History of the Pequot War,’ which was embodied by Increase Mather in his ‘Relation of Trouble by the Indians,’ 1677, and was republished by the Rev. Thomas Prince, with an introduction (Boston, 1736).
[Mason's Brief History of the Pequot War, ed. Prince; Life by George F. Ellis in Sparks's Library of Amer. Biog. xiii. 311–438; Trumbull's Hist. of Connecticut, i. 337 sq.; Winthrop's Hist. of New England, 1630–1649, ed. 1825, i. 104, 223, 233, 267, ii. 311; Massachusetts Hist. Soc. Coll. 2nd ser. viii. 122 sq.; Appleton's Cyclop. of American Biog. iv. 244; Allibone's Dict. of English Literature.]
MASON, JOHN (1646?–1694), enthusiast and poet, probably born in Northamptonshire, belonged to a family of clergymen of the established church living in the neighbourhood of Kettering and Wellingborough. In the registers at Irchester are the baptisms of Thomas and Nicholas, sons of Thomas and Margaret Mason (3 Aug. 1643 and 2 Feb. 1644), and in March 1646 there is a defective entry respecting a son of the same couple, which, as it is almost certainly a baptism, may well refer to John. He was educated first at Strixton in Northamptonshire, and was admitted a sizar of Clare Hall, Cambridge, on 16 May 1661, graduated B.A. in 1664, and M.A. in 1668. After acting as curate at Isham in Northamptonshire, he was presented on 21 Oct. 1668 to the vicarage of Stantonbury in Buckinghamshire, which he quitted for the rectory of Water Stratford in the same county on 28 Jan. 1674.
Mason was a Calvinist, leaning towards antinomianism, but his sympathies were wide. Under the influence of James Wrexham, a puritan preacher at Haversham, formerly vicar of Kimble Magna and of Woburn, Mason's thoughts turned to the prospect of the millennium, and during the last years of his life his views on the subject grew increasingly extravagant. His natural tendency to melancholy greatly increased after the death of his wife in February 1687. In 1690 he preached a sermon on the parable of the ten virgins, which was an attempt to interpret apocalyptic passages of scripture in the light of recent events. The sermon, which was repeated in other places, made some stir, and was published in the following year. About the same time he ceased to administer the sacrament in his church, and preached on no other subject than that of the personal reign of Christ on earth, which he announced as about to begin in Water Stratford. His teaching spread, and attracted some believers and many onlookers, to whom he expounded an extreme form of predestination doctrine. An encampment of his followers was formed on the plot of ground south of the village, called the 'Holy Ground,' where a rough life on communistic principles was carried out. Noisy meetings took place in barns and cottages, and a constant service of dancing and singing was kept up day and night in the parsonage. He described to a crowd from a window in his house on Sunday, 22 April 1694, a vision of the Saviour, which he had experienced, he said, on Easter Monday, 16 April. From that time he used no more prayers, with the exception of the last clause of the Lord's Prayer, but announced that his work was accomplished, as the reign on earth had already begun. He died of a quinsy in the following month, and was buried in the church of Water Stratford on 22 May 1694. The belief in the
