Plymouth obtains a new patent to protect its trading rights
The rival shipmasters and settlers now ranging along the rocky coves and inlets of the Maine coast alarmed Plymouth lest they take control of the mouth of the Kennebec River. Since the autumn of 1625, most of the beaver collected had been furnished by the Abnaki Indians of this region. To secure this area and to define the boundaries of the colony, which had been unspecified in the Peirce patent, Isaac Allerton was directed to seek a new patent from the Council for New England. Some money was laid out for this purpose in his accounts with Sherley in 1628. The first grant he obtained proved to be so “strait and ill bounded,” however, that he had to apply for its enlargement. Sherley reported that Allerton was “so turmoiled about it” that he would not have undertaken such trouble, even for a thousand pounds.
The fruit of these efforts was a patent the Council issued in 1630, signed by the Earl of Warwick. It gave Plymouth not only its first exact boundaries, but a strip of land along the Kennebec, with control of fifteen miles on either side of the river, running up the river as far as the site of Cushenoc or present-day Augusta, Maine. This document, in the name of William Bradford and his associates, the first of their grants reflecting the complete shift in ownership from London to the New World, provided the basis for the colony’s land rights. At the same time Allerton did not succeed in getting past the seals a charter from the King, such as Massachusetts Bay had. He was criticized for this, somewhat unjustly, on the grounds that he failed because he and Sherley included among its terms some special customs privileges. Yet several charters, notably that of Massachusetts Bay, carried privileges similar to those Allerton requested, so it is more likely that a lack of funds and influence at court blocked passage. Allerton had apparently influenced Sherley to persuade Bradford that this charter could be secured only if he was allowed to go back to England. In fact, nothing more came of it, although £500 was reported to have been spent on the patent.[39]