Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. KING'S CHAPEL BUR YING-G ROUND. July 12, 1855. Mb. Editor : — There is a well-known legal conundrum — " What is that which, when it has once begun to run, never leaves off running?" The answer is, "A statute of limitation." It, indeed, runs to some purpose. Its " might makes right." An unauthorized intrusion upon lands — a barefaced squat — it cou- verts at last into a title, guarded by all the sacred majesty of law. Our citizens, as they pass by the chapel in Tremont street, see merely an ancient edifice, of fine proportions, belonging to one of our most wealthy and fashionable congregations, and in the bury- ing-ground adjoining they behold the resting-place of those who, from age to age, after having worshipped at that church, have, at last, been gathered together beside its hallowed walls. Nothing, however, can be farther from the truth of history. Isaac Johnson was one of the most distinguished of the founders of Boston. His wife, the Lady Arabella, nobly born and delicately nurtured, sunk at once under the fatigues and privations of her western voyage, and died at Salem, where she landed. The place of her burial is not known — " Yet still she hath a monument To strike the pensive eye, — The tender memories of the land Wherein her ashes lie." Her husband died shortly afterwards (September 30, 1630). The grave closed, as it were, at once over them both. It is tradition, derived from the late Chief Justice Sewall, that Mr. Johnson had chosen for his lot the great square between Washington, School, Tremont, and Court streets, and that, by his desire, he was buried at the south-west end of that lot, " which gave occasion for thefirst burying-place of this town to be laid out round about his grave." It is, however, a matter of doubt where he was buried, ...