Leonard Hoar - Harvard Presidency and Death

Harvard Presidency and Death

In 1672 Hoar went again to Massachusetts to preach, by invitation, at the Old South Church, Boston. He brought a letter, dated 5 February 1672, addressed to the magistrates and ministers in Massachusetts Bay by thirteen nonconformist ministers in and around London, friends of the colony and agents in raising funds for a new college building, who strongly recommended Hoar for the post of president of Harvard as successor to Charles Chauncy, who died 19 February 1672. The general court voted an increase of salary on the condition that Hoar was elected. He was accordingly chosen, to the disappointment of Urian Oakes, who was widely regarded as Chauncy's legitimate successor. Hoar was immediately elected and installed as President of Harvard on December 10, 1672; a position he held until he resigned on March 15, 1675.

Hoar had high ambitions for Harvard as research centre, as he wrote to Robert Boyle at this time. He was the first president of Harvard College who was also a graduate of it; but he was not well liked by his students or the people of Massachusetts, in part because of his radical religious views. The facts of his time in office remain obscure. Samuel Sewall was educated at Harvard by Hoar, one of only three students to graduate from Harvard in 1673. He was also one of the few to come to Hoar's defense in 1674 or 1675, just before Hoar was forced to resign. Some members of the corporation had combined against him, with the result that all the students, with the exception of three, had left. Sewall later argued that

"the causes of the lowness of the Colledge were external as well as internal."

Daniel Munro Wilson wrote

"At all events the students fell away from the president, and 'set themselves to Travestie whatever he did and said, and aggravate everything in his behavior disagreeable to them, with a design to make him Odious'."

Cotton Mather in his Magnalia Christi Americana stated that

"He was forced to resign ... 'his grief threw him into a Consumption whereof he died November 28, 1675 in Boston'. (Cotton Mather)"

His epitaph in the Hancock Cemetery at Quincy, Massachusetts reads:

Leonard Hoar - died Nov.28,1675 in Boston a.45, and interred here Dec.6, new gs.

Three precious friends under this tombstone lie, patterns to aged, youth, & infancy, a great mother, her learned son, with child, the first and last went free. He was exil'd in love to Christ, this country, and dear friends. He left his own, cross'd seas, and for amends was here extoll'd, envy'd, all in a breath, his noble consort leaves is drawn to death. Stranger chances may befall us ere we die, blest they who arrive well eternity, God grant some names, o though New Englands friend, don't sooner fade than thine, if times don't mend.

His wife Bridget, daughter of John Lisle the regicide, died at Boston, Massachusetts, on 25 May 1723. By her he had two daughters: Bridget, who married, on 21 June 1689, the Rev. Thomas Cotton of London, a liberal benefactor of Harvard College; and Tryphena.