Christian Winther the scenery of Denmark, its beechwoods, lakes and meadows, its violet-scented dingles, its hollows perfumed by wild strawberries, found such a loving and masterly painter as they are never likely to find again. He is the most spontaneous of lyrists; his little poems are steeped in the dew and light and odour of a cool, sunshiny morning in May. His melodies are artless, but full of variety and delicate harmony. When he was forty-seven he fell in love, and at that mature age startled his admirers by publishing for the first time a cycle of love songs. They were what were to be expected from a spirit so unfaded; they still stand alone for tender homage and simple sweetness of passion. The technical perfection of Winther's verse, in its extreme simplicity, makes him the first song-writer of Denmark. (E. G.)
WINTHROP, JOHN (1588–1649), a Puritan leader and governor of Massachusetts, was born in Edwardston, Suffolk, on the 12th of January (O.S.) 1588, the son of Adam Winthrop of Groton Manor, and Anne (Browne) Winthrop. In December 1602 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, but he did not graduate. The years after his brief course at the university were devoted to the practice of law, in which he achieved considerable success, being appointed, about 1623, an attorney in the Court of Wards and Liveries, and also being engaged in the drafting of parliamentary bills. Though his residence was at Groton Manor, much of his time was spent in London. Meanwhile he passed through the deep spiritual experiences characteristic of Puritanism, and made wide acquaintance among the leaders of the Puritan party. On the 26th of August 1629 he joined in the “Cambridge Agreement,” by which he, and his associates, pledged themselves to remove to New England, provided the government and patent of the Massachusetts colony should be removed thither. On the 20th of October following he was chosen governor of the “Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England,” and sailed in the “Arbella” in March 1630, reaching Salem (Mass.) on the 12th of June (O.S.), accompanied by a large party of Puritan immigrants. After a brief sojourn in Charlestown, Winthrop and many of his immediate associates settled in Boston in the autumn of 1630. He shared in the formation of a church at Charlestown (afterwards the First Church in Boston) on the 30th of July 1630, of which he was thenceforth a member. At Boston he erected a large house, and there he lived till his death on the 26th of March (O.S.) 1649.
Winthrop's history in New England was very largely that of the Massachusetts colony, of which he was twelve times chosen governor by annual election, serving in 1629–1634, 1637–1640, in 1642–1644, and in 1646–1649, and dying in office. To the service of the colony he gave not merely unwearied devotion; but in its interests consumed strength and fortune. His own temper of mind was conservative and somewhat aristocratic, but he guided political development, often under circumstances of great difficulty, with singular fairness and conspicuous magnanimity. In 1634–1635 he was a leader in putting the colony in a state of defence against possible coercion by the English government. He opposed the majority of his fellow townsmen in the so-called “Antinomian controversy” of 1636–1637, taking a strongly conservative attitude towards the questions in dispute. He was the first president of the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England, organized in 1643. He defended Massachusetts against threatened parliamentary interference once more in 1645-1646. That the colony successfully weathered its early perils was due more to Winthrop's skill and wisdom than to the services of any other of its citizens.
Winthrop was four times married. His first wife, to whom he was united on the 16th of April 1605, was Mary Forth, daughter of John Forth, of Great Stambridge, Essex. She bore him six children, of whom the eldest was John Winthrop, Jr. (q.v.). She was buried in Groton on the 26th of June 1615. On the 6th of December 1615 he married Thomasine Clopton, daughter of William Clopton of Castleins, near Groton. She died in childbirth about a year later. He married, on the 29th of April 1618, Margaret Tyndal, daughter of Sir John Tyndal, of Great Maplested, Essex. She followed him to New England in 1631, bore him eight children, and died on the 14th of June 1647. Late in 1647 or early in 1648 he married Mrs Martha Coytmore, widow of Thomas Coytmore, who survived him, and by whom he had one son.
Winthrop's Journal, an invaluable record of early Massachusetts history, was printed in part in Hartford in 1790; the whole in Boston, edited by James Savage, as The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, in 1825–1826, and again in 1853; and in New York, edited by James K. Hosmer, in 1908. His biography has been written by Robert C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of John Winthrop (2 vols., Boston, 1864, 1867; new ed. 1869); and by Joseph H. Twichell, John Winthrop (New York, 1891). See also Mrs Alice M. Earle, Margaret Winthrop (New York, 1895).
(W. Wr.)
WINTHROP, JOHN (1606–1676), generally known as John Winthrop the Younger, son of the preceding, born at Groton, England, on the 12th of February 1606. He was educated at the Bury St Edmunds grammar school and at Trinity College, Dublin, studied law for a short time after 1624 at the Inner Temple, London, accompanied the ill-fated expedition of the duke of Buckingham for the relief of the Protestants of La Rochelle, and then travelled in Italy and the Levant, returning to England in 1629. In 1631 he followed his father to Massachusetts, and was one of the “assistants” in 1635, 1640 and 1641, and from 1644 to 1649. He was the chief founder of Agawam (now Ipswich), Mass., in 1633, went to England in 1634, and in the following year returned as governor, for one year, of Connecticut, under the Saye and Sele patent, sending out the party which built the fort at Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut river. He then lived for a time in Massachusetts, where he devoted himself to the study of science and attempted to interest the settlers in the development of the colony's mineral resources. He was again in England in 1641-1643, and on his return established iron-works at Lynn and Braintree, Mass. In 1645 he obtained a title to lands in south-eastern Connecticut, and founded there in 1646 what is now New London, whither he removed in 1650. He became one of the magistrates of Connecticut in 1651; in 1657-1658 was governor of the colony; and in 1659 again became governor, being annually re-elected until his death. In 1662 he obtained in England the charter by which the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven were united. Besides being governor of Connecticut, he was also in 1675 one of the commissioners of the United Colonies of New England. While in England he was elected to membership in the newly organized Royal Society, to whose Philosophical Transactions he contributed two papers, “Some Natural Curiosities from New England,” and “Description, Culture and Use of Maize.” He died on the 5th of April 1676 in Boston, whither he had gone to attend a meeting of the commissioners of the United Colonies of New England.
His correspondence with the Royal Society was published in series 1, vol. xvi. of the Massachusetts Historical Society's Proceedings. See T. F. Waters's Sketch of the Life of John Winthrop the Younger (Ipswich, Mass., 1899).
Winthrop's son, Fitz-John Winthrop (1638–1707), was educated at Harvard, though he did not take a degree; served in the parliamentary army in Scotland under Monck, whom he accompanied on his march to London, and returned to Connecticut in 1663. As major-general he commanded the unsuccessful expedition of the New York and Connecticut forces against Canada in 1690; from 1693 to 1697 he was the agent of Connecticut in London; and from 1698 until his death he was governor of Connecticut.
WINTHROP, ROBERT CHARLES American orator and statesman, a descendant of Governor John Winthrop (1588-1649), was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 12th of May 1809. He graduated at Harvard in 1828, studied law with Daniel Webster and in 1831 was admitted to the bar. He was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1834-1840—for the last three years as speaker,—and in 1840 was elected to the national House of Representatives as a Whig, serving from December 1840 to 1850 (with a short intermission, April-December 1842). He soon became prominent and was speaker of the Thirtieth Congress (1847-1849), though his
