Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8) / English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689

by Unknown

CHAPTER IX.

NEW ENGLAND.

BY CHARLES DEANE, LL. D.,

Vice-President of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The Council for New England.—This body was incorporated in the eighteenth year of the reign of James I., on the 3d of November, 1620, under the name of the “Council established at Plymouth, in the County of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New England, in America.” The corporation consisted of forty patentees, the most of whom were persons of distinction: thirteen were peers, some of the highest rank. The patentees were empowered to hold territory in America extending from the fortieth to the forty-eighth degree of north latitude, and westward from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and they were authorized to settle and govern the same. This charter is the foundation of most of the grants which were afterward made of the territory of New England.

This Company was substantially a reincorporation of the adventurers or associates of the Northern Colony of Virginia, with additional privileges, placing them on a footing with their rivals of the Southern Colony, whose franchise had been twice enlarged since the issuing of the original charter of April 10, 1606, which incorporated both companies. A notice of this earlier enterprise will but briefly detain us.

While the Southern Colony had attracted the wealth and influence of leading adventurers who represented the more liberal party in the government, and were enabled to prosecute their plans of colonization with vigor to a good degree of success, the Northern Colony had signally failed from the beginning. The former had established at Jamestown, in 1607, the first permanent English Colony in America. The latter produced no greater results than the abortive settlement at Sabino, known as the Popham Colony.[522] The discouragement following upon its abandonment prompted the withdrawal of many of the adventurers, though the organization of the patentees still survived; but of their meetings and records we have no trace. Sir Ferdinando Gorges himself would not despair, but engaged his private fortune in fishing, trading, and exploring expeditions, and in making attempts at settlement. Many of these enterprises he speaks of as private ventures, while the Council for New England, in their Briefe Relation, of 1622, which I have sometimes thought was written by Gorges himself, speaks of them in the name of the Company. The probability is that Gorges was the principal person who kept alive the cherished scheme of settling the country, and by his influence a few other persons were engaged, and the name of the Council covered many of these enterprises.

Gorges now conceived the scheme of a great monopoly. King James had reigned since 1614 without a parliament, and during the following years down to the meeting of the next parliament, in January, 1620/21, a large part of the business of the country had been monopolized by individuals or by associations that had secured special privileges from the Crown. Gorges was a friend of the King and of the “prerogative.” Under the plea of desiring a new incorporation of the adventurers of the Northern Colony, in order to place them on an equality of privileges with the Southern Colony, Gorges had devised the plan of securing a monoply of the fishing in the waters of New England for the patentees of the new corporation, and for those who held or purchased license from them. He had the adroitness to enlist in his favor a large number of the principal noblemen and gentlemen. Relative to his proceedings, Gorges himself says: “Of this, my resolution, I was bold to offer the sounder considerations to divers of his Majesty’s honorable Privy Council, who had so good liking thereunto as they willingly became interested themselves therein as patentees and councillors for the managing of the business, by whose favors I had the easier passage in the obtaining his Majesty’s royal charter to be granted us according to his warrant to the then solicitor-general,” etc. The petition for the new charter was dated March 3, 1619/20; the warrant for its preparation, July 23; and it passed the seals Nov. 3, 1620.

An inspection of the several patents granted by King James will show that, in those of 1606 and 1609, among the privileges conferred is that of “fishings.” But the word is there used in connection with other privileges appertaining to and within the precincts conveyed, such as “mines, minerals, marshes,” etc., and probably meant “fishings” in rivers and ponds, and not in the seas. In the patent of Nov. 3, 1620, a similar clause ends, “and seas adjoining,” which may be intended to cover the alleged privilege. In this patent, as in the others, there is no clause forbidding free fishing within the seas of New England; but all persons without license first obtained from the Council are, in the patent of Nov. 3, 1620, forbidden to visit the coast, and the clause of forfeiture of vessel and cargo is inserted. This prevented fishermen from landing and procuring wood for constructing stages to dry their fish.

A few days after the petition of Gorges and his associates had been presented to the King for a new charter, with minutes indicating the nature of the privileges asked for, the Southern Colony took the alarm, and the subject was brought before its members by the treasurer, Sir Edwin Sandys, at a meeting on the 15th of March, 1619/20, at which a committee was appointed to appear before the Privy Council the next day, to protest against the fishing monopoly asked for by the Northern Colony. The result of the conference, at which Gorges was present, was a reference to two members of the Council,—the Duke of Lenox and the Earl of Arundell, both patentees in the new patent; and they decided or recommended that each colony should fish within the bounds of the other, with this limitation,—“that it be only for the sustentation of the people of the colonies there, and for the transportation of people into either colony.” This order gave satisfaction to neither party. The Southern Colony protested against being deprived of privileges which they had always enjoyed. Gorges contended that the Northern Colony had been excluded from the limits of the rival company, and he only desired the same privilege of excluding them in turn. The matter came again before the Privy Council on the 21st of July following, and that board confirmed the recommendation of the 16th of March. Two days later, on the 23d of July, the warrant to the solicitor-general for the preparation of the patent was issued, and it passed the seals, as already stated, on the 3d of November.

On the following day, November 4, Sir Edwin Sandys announced at a meeting of the Southern Colony, or what was now known as the Virginia Company, that the patent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, containing certain words which contradicted a former order of the Lords of the Council, had passed the seals, and that the adventurers of the Northern Colony by this grant had utterly excluded the Southern Colony from fishing on that coast without their leave and license first sought and obtained. By a general consent it was resolved to supplicate his Majesty for redress, and Sir Thomas Roe was desired to present the petition which had been drawn.

On the 13th Sir Thomas Roe reported that he had attended to that duty, and that the King had said that if anything was passed in the New England patent prejudicial to the Southern Colony, it was surreptitiously done, and without his knowledge, and that he had been abused thereby by those who pretended otherwise unto him. This was confirmed by the Earl of Southampton, who further said that the King gave command to the Lord Chamberlain, then present, that if this new patent were not sealed, to forbear the seal; and if it were sealed and not delivered, to keep it in hand till they were better informed. His Lordship further signified that on Saturday last they had been with the Lord Chancellor about it, when were present the Duke of Lenox, the Earl of Arundell, and others, who, after hearing the allegations on both sides, ordered that the patent should be delivered to be perused by some of the Southern Colony, who were to report what exceptions they found thereunto against the next meeting. Two days later it was announced through the Earl of Southampton that, at a recent conference with Gorges, it was agreed that for the present “the patent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges should be sequestered and deposited in my Lord Chancellor’s hands according to his Majesty’s express command.”

The Council for New England, in their Briefe Relation (1622) of these proceedings, recounting the opposition of the Virginia Company, say that “lastly, the patent being passed the seal, it was stopped, upon new suggestions to the King, and by his Majesty referred to the Council to be settled, by whom the former orders were confirmed, the difference cleared, and we ordered to have our patent delivered us.”

The modifications suggested or directed by the Privy Council appear not to have been embodied in the instrument itself as it passed the seals. Gorges’ friends were very strong in the council board, some of the members being patentees in the grant, and they carried matters with a high hand. But before the order came for the final delivery of the patent, Gorges and his patentees were called to encounter a still more formidable opposition. Gorges himself tells us that his rivals had plainly told him that “howsoever I had sped before the Lords, I should hear more of it the next Parliament;” and that this body was no sooner assembled than he found it too true wherewith he had been formerly threatened.

The Parliament met Jan. 16, 1620/21, it being the first time for more than seven years, and at once adjourned to the 30th of that month. On its assembling, the House of Commons immediately proceeded to present the public grievances of the kingdom, prominent among which were the monopolies that had sprung up like hydras during the last few years under the royal prerogative. On the 17th of April “An Act for the freer liberty of fishing voyages, to be made and performed on the sea-coast and places of Newfoundland, Virginia, New England, and other the sea-coasts and parts of America,” was introduced. On the 25th this was repeated, and a debate followed, opened by Sir Edwin Sandys, who called attention to the new grant obtained for what had now come to be called New England, with a sole privilege of fishing; also to the fact that the King, who had been made acquainted with it, had stayed the patent; that the Virginia Company desired no appropriation of this fishing to them; that it was worth one hundred thousand pounds per annum in coin; that the English “little frequent this, in respect of this prohibition, but the Dutch and French.” He therefore moved for “a free liberty for all the King’s subjects for fishing there,” saying it was pitiful that any of the King’s subjects should be prohibited, since the French and Dutch were at liberty to come and fish there notwithstanding the colony.

The debate was continued. Secretary Calvert “doubteth the fishermen the hinderers of the plantation; that they burn great store of woods, and choke the havens;” that he “never will strain the King’s prerogative against the good of the commonwealth;” and that it was “not fit to make any laws here for those countries which not as yet annexed to the Crown.”

The bill was committed to Sir Edwin Sandys, and a full hearing advertized to all burgesses of London, York, and the port towns, who might wish to testify, that day seven-night, in the Exchequer Chamber.

On the 4th of June Parliament adjourned to the 14th of November, and in the intermission Sir Edwin Sandys was arrested and thrown into prison. It is significant that, notwithstanding this opposition in the House of Commons, the Privy Council, on the 18th, ordered that the sequestered patent be delivered to Gorges, in terms which provided that each colony (the Northern and the Southern) should have the additional freedom of the shore for the drying of their nets and the taking and saving of their fish, and to have wood for their necessary uses, etc.; also that the patent of the Northern plantation be renewed according to the premises, while those of the Southern plantation were to have a sight thereof before it be engrossed, and that the former patent be delivered to the patentees.

I have already remarked that the orders of the Privy Council early directed certain modifications to be made in the proposed patent which were not embodied in it when first drawn; nor were they ultimately included, although Gorges himself admitted, when afterward summoned before the Committee of the House of Commons, that the patent yet remained in the Crown office, “where it was left since the last Parliament” (he meant, since the last session of Parliament), “for that it was resolved to be renewed for the amendment of some faults contained therein.”

No doubt the intention was that a new patent should be drawn, and that the delivery of the existing parchment was provisional only.[523] The patent, however, never was renewed, though a scheme for a renewal of a most radical character was seriously contemplated all through the year following the dissolution of the Parliament in 1622; and Sir Henry Spelman and John Selden were consulted in regard to land tenures, the rights of the Crown, and the like, in reference thereto.

On the reassembling of Parliament in November, the subject was once again approached in the Commons. It was charged that since the recess Gorges had executed a patent. One had been issued, dated June 1, 1621, to John Peirce for the Plymouth people. He had also, by patent or by verbal agreement, by the King’s request, released to Sir William Alexander all the land east of St. Croix, known as Nova Scotia, confirmed to him by a royal charter September 10 of this year.[524] It was also charged that Gorges was threatening to use force in restricting the right to fish; and accordingly on the 20th an order was passed directing his patent to be brought in to the Committee on Grievances.[525]

The result was that on the 21st of December an Act for freer liberty of fishing passed the Commons, while previously, on the 18th, “Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Sir Jo. Bowcer, the patentees for fishing in and about New England, to be warned to appear here the first day of next Access, and to bring their patent, or a copy thereof.” Parliament then adjourned to the 8th of February; but it was subsequently prorogued and dissolved. Before the adjournment, in the afternoon, the Commons, foreseeing their dissolution, entered on their records a protestation in vindication of their rights and privileges; but the record is here mutilated by having the obnoxious passage torn out by the hands of the King, who sent for the Journal of the House and placed this mark of his tyranny upon it. Gorges himself, at this session of the Parliament, twice appeared before the Committee of the House, and had a preliminary examination without his counsel. He was questioned by Sir Edward Coke about his patent, which Coke called a grievance of the commonwealth, and complained of as “a monopoly, and the color of planting a colony put upon it for particular ends and private gain.” Gorges says he was treated with great courtesy, but was told that “the Public was to be respected before all particulars,” and that the patent must be brought into the House. Gorges replied by defending the plan of the adventurers, which he said was undertaken for the advancement of religion, the enlargement of the bounds of the nation, the increase of trade, and the employment of many thousands of people. He rehearsed what had already been done in the discovery and seizure of the coast, told of the failures and discouragements encountered, and explained the present scheme of regulating the affairs of the intended plantation for the public good. As for the delivery of the patent, he had not the power to do it himself, as he was but a particular person, and inferior to many. Besides, the patent still remained, for aught he knew, in the Crown Office, where it was left for amendment. He was then told to be prepared to attend further at a future day, and with counsel. In the end, also, the breaking up of Parliament prevented the bill for free fishing, which had passed the Commons, from becoming a law.

Of course, the opposition encountered—first from the Virginia Company and then from the House of Commons, the latter representing largely the popular sentiment—was a serious hindrance to the operations of the Council for New England. The disputes with the former, the Council themselves say, “held them almost two years, so as all men were afraid to join with them.”

The records of the Council, so far as they are extant, begin on “Saturday, the last of May, 1622,” at “Whitehall,” at which there were seven persons present, “the Lord Duke of Lenox” heading the list. Some business was transacted before this date, as the first day’s record here refers to it. The record of the organization of the Council is wanting; and two persons named as present at this meeting—Captain Samuel Argall and Dr. Barnabe Goche—were not included in the list of the forty patentees. They must have been elected since, in the place of others who had resigned. Goche was now elected treasurer in the place of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. I think that the Duke of Lenox was the first president of the Council. In the patent granted to John Peirce, mentioned above as taken out on behalf of the Pilgrims, dated June 1, 1621,—which, I may add, was nearly a year before the date of any known record of the Council,—purporting to be signed by “the President and Counsell,” who have “set their seals” to the same, were the names of Lenox, Hamilton, Ro. Warwick, Sheffield, Ferd. Gorges, in the order here given, and one other name indistinct, with their separate seals.[526]

It is not improbable, therefore, that the business transactions of the Council, in this inchoate and uncertain period of its existence, were so few that they were preserved only in loose minutes, or files of papers, which were never recorded, and are now lost.

After they had freed their patent, they first considered how they should raise the means to advance the plantation, and two methods were suggested. One contemplated a voluntary contribution by the patentees; and the other, the ransoming the freedoms of those who were willing to partake of present profits arising by the trade or fishing on the coast. The patentees, in the one case, agreed to pay one hundred pounds apiece (the records say £110); in the other, inducements were offered to the western cities and towns to form joint-stock associations for trade and fishing, from which a revenue in the shape of royalty might be derived to the Council: and, in order to further this latter project, letters were to be issued to those cities, by the Privy Council, prohibiting any not free of that business from visiting the coast, upon pain of confiscation of ship and goods. This last scheme was not favorably received. The letters produced an effect contrary to what was expected, since the restraining of the liberty of free fishing gave alarm; and, as the Parliament of 1621 was about to meet, every possible influence was brought to bear against this great monopoly, with what effect we have already seen.

While the plan of voluntary associations failed, the business of exacting a tax from individual fishermen was prosecuted with vigor, and probably; in some instances with success. A proclamation against disorderly trading, or visiting the coasts of New England without a license from the Council, was issued. A grand scheme for settling the coast of New England by a local government was marked out, and the Platform of the Government was put into print.[527]

The project of laying out a county on the Kennebec River; forty miles square, for general purposes, and building a great city at the junction of the Kennebec and Androscoggin Rivers, was part of the great plan. A ship and pinnace had been built at Whitby, a seaport in Yorkshire, at large expense, for use in the colony; and others were contemplated. They were to lie on the coast for the defence of the merchants and fishermen, and to convoy the fleets as they went to and from their markets. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who had been treasurer of the Council, was now chosen governor, and was destined for New England; but the Company were seriously embarrassed for funds, and finally were obliged to mortgage the ship to some of their individual members. The assessments of £110 each were not all paid in, and patentees who did not intend to pay were asked to resign, so that others might take their places. Constant complaints were made of merchants who were violating the privileges of the Company by sending out vessels for fishing and trading on the coast; and orders were passed for applying remedies. The plan for the new patent is constantly referred to in the records, and the present patentees are to be warned that they will have no place in it, unless they pay up their past dues. The inducement to be held out is, that all who actually pay £110 may have a place in the new grant, provided they “be persons of honor or gentlemen of blood, except only six merchants to be admitted by us for the service, and especial employments of the said Council in the course of trade and commerce,” etc. But their schemes were not realized.

In the Council’s prospectus already cited, issued in the summer of 1622, they say, “We have settled, at this present, several plantations along the coast, and have granted patents to many more that are in preparation to be gone with all conveniency.” The bare fact, however, is that the Pilgrims at Plymouth were the only actual settlers, and they had landed within the patent limits by the merest chance. There may have been some other bodies of men, in small numbers, living on the coast, such as Gorges used to hire, at large expense, to spend the winter there. His servant, Richard Vines, a highly respectable man, was sent out to the coast for trade and discovery, and spent some time in the country; and he is supposed to have passed one winter during a great plague among the Indians,—perhaps that of 1616-17,—at the mouth of the Saco River.[528] Vines and John Oldham afterward had a patent of Biddeford, on that river. Several scattering plantations were begun in the following year.

FROM DUDLEY’S ARCANO DEL MARE.

The complaints to the Council of abuses committed by fishermen and other interlopers, who without license visited the coast, and by their conduct caused the overthrow of the trade and the dishonor of the government, led to the selection of Robert Gorges, the younger son of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and who was recently returned from the Venetian wars, to be sent to New England for the correction of these abuses. He was commissioned as lieutenant-general, and there were appointed for his council and assistants Captain Francis West as admiral, Christopher Levett, and the governor of Plymouth for the time being. Robert Gorges had but recently become a shareholder in the grand patent, and he had also a personal grant of a tract of land on the northeast side of Massachusetts Bay, ten miles along the coast, and extending thirty miles into the interior. This was made to him partly in consideration of his father’s services to the Company.

West was commissioned in November, 1622; and his arrival at Plymouth, in New England, is noticed by Bradford “as about the latter end of June.” He had probably been for some time on the Eastern coast as he related his experiences to Bradford, who says he “had a commission to be admiral of New England, to restrain interlopers and such fishing ships as came to fish and trade without a license from the Council of New England, for which they should pay a round sum of money. But he could do no good of them, for they were too strong for him, and he found the fishermen to be stubborn fellows.... So they went from hence to Virginia.” West returned from Virginia in August, and probably joined Captain Gorges, who made his appearance in the Bay of Massachusetts in August or September of this year, having “sundry passengers and families, intending there to begin a plantation, and pitched upon the place Mr. Weston’s people had forsaken,” at Wessagusset. By his commission he and his council had full power “to do and execute what to them should seem good, in all cases, capital, criminal, and civil.”

This sending out of young Gorges with authority was probably a temporary expedient for the present emergency, preparatory to the great scheme of government set forth, a few months before he sailed, in the Council’s Briefe Relation. Captain Gorges had a private enterprise to look after while charged with these public duties. The patent which he brought over, issued to himself personally, provided for a government to be administered “acording to the great charter of England, and such Lawes as shall be hereafter established by public authority of the State assembled in Parliament in New England,” all decisions being subject to appeal to the Council for New England, “and to the court of Parliament hereafter to be in New England aforesaid.”

Gorges remained here but a short time,—probably not quite a year,—having during his stay a sharp conflict with the notorious Thomas Weston, whom Governor Bradford, in pity to the man, attempted to shield from punishment. In speaking of Gorges’ return to England, Bradford says that he “scarcely saluted the country in his government, not finding the state of things here to answer his quality and condition.” His people dispersed: some went to England, and some to Virginia. Sir Ferdinando Gorges himself assigns another reason for his son’s speedy abandoning the country. He says that Robert was sent out by Lord Gorges and himself,—meaning, I suppose, that he came at their personal charge,—and that he was disappointed in not receiving supplies from “divers his familiar friends who had promised as much; but they, hearing how I sped in the House of Parliament, withdrew themselves, and myself and friends were wholly disabled to do anything to purpose.” The report of these proceedings coming to his son’s ears, he was advised to return home till better occasion should serve.

The records of the Council show that for the space of one year their business was pursued with considerable vigor by the few members who were interested.[529] Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of course, was the mainstay of the enterprise. The principal business was to prepare to put their plans into operation. The money did not come in, and a large number of the patentees fell off. Much time was spent in inducing new members to engage, and pay in their money; and the efforts to bring the merchant fishermen to acknowledge the claims of the Council, and to take out licenses for traffic and fishing, were untiring.

Finally, in the summer of 1623, the Council resolved to divide the whole territory of New England among the patentees, “in the plot remaining with Dr. Goche,” the treasurer. The reasons given for this step are, “For that some of the adventurers excuse their non-payment in of their adventures because they know not their shares for which they are to pay, which much prejudiceth the proceedings, it is thought fit that the land of New England be divided in this manner; viz., by 20 lots, and each lot to contain 2 shares. And for that there are not full 40 and above 20 adventurers, that only 20 shall draw those lots.” Provision was accordingly made that each person drawing two shares should part with one share to some member who might not have drawn, or some one else who shall thereafter become an adventurer, to the end that the full “number of forty may be complete.” The meeting for the drawing was held on Sunday, June 29, 1623, at Greenwich, at which the King was present.[530]

The “plot” of New England, on which this division is shown, with the names set down according as the lots were drawn, was published the next year in Sir William Alexander’s Encouragement to Colonies; and on page 31 of his book the writer speaks of hearing that “out of a generous desire by his example to encourage others for the advancement of so brave an enterprise he [Sir Ferdinando Gorges] is resolved shortly to go himself in person, and to carry with him a great number well fitted for such a purpose; and many noblemen in England (whose names and proportions as they were marshalled by lot may appear upon the map), having interested themselves in that bounds, are to send several colonies, who may quickly make this to exceed all other plantations.”

Alexander must have been well informed of the intentions of the Company, certainly familiar with those of Gorges himself; and it must have been with their knowledge and approbation that the act above recorded was thus published.

ALEXANDER’S MAP, 1624.

[This is a fac-simile of a part of the map, as reproduced in Purchas’s Pilgrims.—Ed.]

The meeting at which the division was made is the last of which we have any record for a number of years, and the history of the Company during these years must be gathered from other sources. The grand colonial scheme intended to be put in operation never went into effect; and at a late period the Council say, concerning this division, that hitherto they have never been confirmed in the lands so allotted.

A new Parliament was summoned to meet February 12, 1623/24, and on the 24th we find this minute: “Mr. Neale delivereth in the bill for free liberty of fishing upon the coasts of America.” “Five ships of Plymouth under arrest, and two of Dartmouth, because they went to fish in New England. This done by warrant from the Admiralty. To have these suits staid till this bill have had its passage. This done by Sir Ferdinando Gorges his Patent. Ordered, that this patent be brought into the Committee of Grievances upon Friday next.” March 15, 1623/24, an Act for freer liberty of fishing, as previously introduced, was committed to a large committee, of which Sir Edward Coke was chairman. On the 17th, Sir Edward reported from this committee that they had condemned one grievance, namely, “Sir Ferdinand Gorges his patent for a plantation in New England. Their council heard, the exceptions being first delivered them. Resolved by consent, that, notwithstanding the clause in the patent dated 3d November, 18th Jac., that no subject of England shall visit the coast upon pain of forfeiture of ship and goods, the patentees have yielded that the Englishmen shall visit, and that they will not interrupt any fisherman to fish there.” Finally it was enacted by the House that the clause of forfeiture, being only by patent and not by act of Parliament, was void.

Gorges himself gives a graphic picture of the scene when he, with his counsel, was before the Committee of the House, and he spoke so unavailingly in defence of his patent. This patent was the first presented from the Committee of Grievances. “This their public declaration of the Houses ... shook off all my adventurers for plantation, and made many of the patentees to quit their interest;” so that in all likelihood he would have fallen under the weight of so heavy a burden, had he not been supported by the King, who would not be drawn to overthrow the corporation he so much approved of, and Gorges was advised to persevere. Still he thought it better to forbear for the present, though the bill did not become a law of the realm. Soon afterward the French ambassador made a challenge of all those territories as belonging of right to the King of France, and Gorges was called to make answer to him; and his reply was so full that “no more was heard of that their claim.”

Being unable to enforce the claim whence was to come the principal source of its income, and the larger part of the patentees having abandoned the enterprise, the Great Council for New England, whose patent had been denounced by the House of Commons as a monopoly and opposed to the public policy and the general good, became a dead body. In the following year, 1625, we hear of Gorges as commander of one of the vessels in the squadron ordered by Buckingham to Dieppe for the service of the King of France. Finding on his arrival that the vessels were destined to serve against Rochelle, which was then sustaining a siege, Gorges broke through the squadron, and returned to England with his ship.

In the summer of 1625 the Plymouth people were in great trouble by reason of their unhappy relations to the Adventurers in London, and Captain Standish was sent over to seek some accommodation with them. At the same time he bore a letter from Governor Bradford to the Council of New England, urging their intervention in behalf of the colony “under your government.” But Bradford says that, by reason of the plague which that year raged in London, Standish could do nothing with the Council for New England, for there were no courts kept or scarce any commerce held.

Two years later, in the summer of 1627, Governor Bradford again wrote to the Council for New England, under whose government he acknowledged themselves to be, and also to Sir Ferdinando Gorges himself, advising them of the encroachments of the Dutch, and also making complaints of the disorderly fishermen and interlopers, who, with no intent to plant, and with no license, foraged the country and were off again, to the great annoyance of the Plymouth settlers.

After a patent to Christopher Levett, of May 5, 1623, the Council appear to have made no grants of land till, in 1628, two patents were issued,—one to the Plymouth people of land on the Kennebec River, and one to Rosewell, Young, Endicott, and others, patentees of Massachusetts. These were followed by a grant to John Mason, of Nov. 7, 1629, the Laconia grant of Nov. 17, 1629, that to Plymouth Colony of Jan. 13, 1629/30, and sundry grants of territory in the present States of Maine and New Hampshire.

The records of the Council, of which there is a hiatus of over eight years in the parts now extant (and the latter portion is a transcript with probably many omissions), begin on the 4th of November, 1631, with the Earl of Warwick as president, and contain entries of sundry patents granted, and of the final transactions of the Company during its existence. Precisely when the Earl of Warwick was chosen president we do not know. His name appears in the Plymouth patent of Jan. 13, 1629/30, as holding that office, and it is quite likely that he was president when the Massachusetts patent was issued, he being chiefly instrumental in passing that grant. The Council seem now to have revived their hopes as they did their activity. As late as Nov. 6, 1634, divers matters of moment were propounded: “First, that the number of the Council be with all convenient speed filled. [It appears by a previous meeting that there were now but twenty-one members in all, whereas the patent called for no less than forty.] Second, that a new patent from his Majesty be obtained.” Also, that no ships, passengers, nor goods be permitted to go to New England without license from the President and Council; and that fishermen should not be allowed to trade with savages, nor with the servants of planters, nor to cut timber for stages, without license. This, surely, is a revival of the old odious policy. We do not know if any of these orders were adopted.

There seems at this time to have arisen a serious misunderstanding or quarrel between the Council and their President, the Earl of Warwick. It first appears at a meeting held June 29, 1632. The President was not present at this meeting, though it was held, as the meetings had been held for some years past, at “Warwick House.” An order was adopted “that the Earl of Warwick should be entreated to direct a course for finding out what patents have been granted for New England.” At the same meeting the clerk was sent to the Earl for the Council’s great seal, which was in his lordship’s keeping; and word came back that he would send it when his man came in. It was also ordered that the future meetings of the Council be held at the house of Captain Mason, in Fenchurch Street. But the seal was not sent, and two more formal requests were made for it during the next six months. Captain John Mason was chosen vice-president Nov. 26, 1632. The records for 1633 and 1634 are wanting. Early in 1635 the Council resolved to resign their patent into the hands of the King; preparatory to which they made a new partition of the territory of New England, dividing it among themselves, or, according to the records, among eight of their number. Of what precise number the Council consisted at this time we have no means of knowing. The division was made at a meeting held Feb. 3, 1634/35, and to the description of each particular grant the members on the 14th of April affixed their signatures, each person withholding his signature to his own share. In making this division it was ordered that every one who had lawful grants of land, or lawfully settled plantations, should enjoy the same, laying down his jura regalia to the proprietor of this division, and paying him some small acknowledgment. A memorandum is also made that “the 22d day of April several deeds of feoffment were made unto the several proprietors.”

The act of surrender passed June 7, 1635. Lord Gorges had been chosen president April 18. The Company seem to have been kept alive till some years later, as there is an entry as late as Nov. 1, 1638, at which it was agreed to augment the grants of the Earl of Sterling and Lord Gorges and Sir F. Gorges, the two latter to have “sixty miles more added to their proportions further up into the main land.” Of course, in making this division the whole patent of Nov. 3, 1620, was not divided, for that ran from sea to sea. It was a division on the New England coast, running back generally sixty miles inland. It was part of the plan to procure from the King, under the great seal of England, a confirmation of these several grants. Lord Sterling’s grant included also Long Island, near Hudson’s River.

The intention in this division was to ride over the Massachusetts patent of 1628, which had been confirmed the following year by a charter of incorporation from the King, and legal proceedings were soon afterward instituted by a writ of quo warranto for vacating their franchises. The notorious Thomas Morton was retained as a solicitor to prosecute this suit. The grants issued in this division to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and to John Mason are the only ones with which subsequent history largely deals.[531]

The King, in accepting the resignation of the Grand Patent, resolved to take the management of the affairs of New England into his own hands, and to appoint as his general governor Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who himself, or by deputy, was to reside in the country. But “the best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang aft a-gley.” The attempt to vacate the charter of Massachusetts Bay, a fundamental thing to be done, was not accomplished. The patentees to whom several of the divisions of the territory of New England were assigned appear to have wholly neglected their interest, and, except in the case of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, before referred to, royal charters were granted to none.

Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut were settled under grants, or alleged grants, from the Council for New England. The grant of the territory of Massachusetts Bay of March 19, 1627/28, was in the following year confirmed by the Crown, with powers of government. The grant to Sir Ferdinando Gorges in the general division of February, 1634/35, with an additional sixty miles into the interior subsequently added, was confirmed by the Crown April 3, 1639, with a charter constituting him Lord Proprietor of the Province of Maine, and giving him extraordinary powers of government. The territory issued to John Mason at the general division, which was to be called New Hampshire, the parchment bearing date April 22, 1635, was never confirmed by the King, nor were any powers of government granted. The first settlements in Connecticut,—namely, those of the three towns on the river of that name, in 1635 and 1636,—were made under the protection of Massachusetts, as though the territory had been part of that colony. But the inhabitants subsequently acquired a quasi claim to this territory, under what is known as the “old patent of Connecticut,” impliedly proceeding from the Council for New England, through the Earl of Warwick, to Lord Say and Sele and his associates. The settlers of Quinnipiack, afterward called New Haven, in 1638 and 1639, had no patent for lands, but made a number of purchases from the Indians. Plymouth Colony, of which an account is given here by another hand, received a roving patent from the Council, dated June 1, 1621, with no boundaries; and another patent, dated Jan. 13, 1629/30, defining their limits, but with no powers of government. The territory of Rhode Island was not a grant from the Council to the settlers.

Massachusetts.—There were scattered settlements in Massachusetts Bay prior to the emigration under the patent of 1627/28. Thomas Weston began a settlement at what is now Weymouth Fore-River, in the summer of 1622, which lasted scarcely one year. Robert Gorges, as we have seen, took possession of the same place, in September, 1623, for his experimental government, but the colony broke up the next spring, leaving, it is thought, a few remnants behind, which proved a seed for a continuous settlement. Persons are found temporarily at Nantasket in 1625, and perhaps earlier; at Mount Wollaston the same year, and at Thompson’s Island in 1626. The solitary William Blaxton, clerk, is traced to Shawmut, (Boston) in 1625 or 1626, and the equally solitary Samuel Maverick, at Noddles’ Island, about the same time; while Walford, the blacksmith, is found at Charlestown in 1629. The last three named are reasonably conjectured to have formed part of Robert Gorges’ company at Weymouth, in 1623/24.

The Dorchester Fishing Company, in England, of which the Rev. John White, a zealous Puritan minister of that town, was a member, resolved to make the experiment of planting a small colony somewhere upon the coast, so that the fishing vessels might leave behind in the country all the spare men not required to navigate their vessels home, who might in the mean time employ themselves in planting, building, etc., and be ready to join the ships again on their return to the coast at the next fishing season. Cape Ann was selected as the site of this experiment, and in the autumn of 1623 fourteen men were left there to pass the winter. In the latter part of the year 1625 Roger Conant, who had been living at Plymouth and at Nantasket, was invited to join this community as its superintendent, and he remained there one year. The scheme proving a financial failure, the settlement broke up in the autumn of 1626, most of the men returning home; but Conant and a few others removed to Naumkeag (Salem), where they were found by Endicott, who, under the authority of the Massachusetts patentees, arrived there Sept. 6, 1628. These old settlers joined the new community.

Endicott was sent out as agent or superintendent of a large land company, of which he was one of the proprietors, colonization being, of course, a prominent feature in their plans. In the following year, March 4, 1628-29, the patentees and their associates received a charter of incorporation, with powers of government, and with authority to establish a subordinate government on the soil, and appoint officers of the same. This local government, entitled “London’s Plantation in Massachusetts Bay in New England,” was accordingly established, and Endicott was appointed the first resident governor. The charter evidently contemplated that the government of the Company should be administered in England. In a few months, however, the Company resolved to transfer the charter and government from London to Massachusetts Bay; and Matthew Cradock, who had been the first charter governor, resigned his place, and John Winthrop, who had resolved to emigrate to the colony, was chosen governor of the Company in his stead. On the transfer of the Company to Massachusetts by the arrival of Winthrop, the subordinate government, of which Endicott was the head, was silently abolished, and its duties were assumed by its principal, the corporation itself, which took immediate direction of affairs. As the successor of Cradock, Winthrop was the second governor of the Massachusetts Company, yet he was the first who exercised his functions in New England.

The Massachusetts charter was not adapted for the constitution of a commonwealth; therefore, as the colony grew in numbers it became necessary for it to assume powers not granted in that instrument. Between the years 1630 and 1640 about twenty thousand persons arrived in the colony, after which, for many years, it is supposed that more went back to England than came thence hither. Previous to the year last named the colony had furnished emigrants to settle the colonies of Connecticut, New Haven, and Rhode Island.

The charter gave power to the freemen to elect annually a governor, deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants, who should make laws for their own benefit and for the government of the colony; and provision was made for general courts and courts of assistants, which exercised judicial as well as legislative powers. But at the first meeting of the general court in Boston, in October, 1630, it was ordered that the governor and deputy-governor should be chosen by the assistants out of their own number. This rule was of short duration, as in May, 1632, the freemen resumed the right of election, and the basis of a second house of legislature was laid.

The colonists, though Puritans, were Church of England men, and were fearful of rigid separation; but Winthrop and his party,—among whom was John Wilson, a graduate of King’s College, Cambridge, and destined to become their first minister,—found on their arrival a church already established at Salem on the basis of separation. Thenceforward, following that example, the Massachusetts colony became a colony of congregational churches. It has been a favorite saying with eulogists of Massachusetts, that the pious founders of the colony came over to this wilderness to establish here the principle of civil and religious liberty, and to transmit the same inviolate to their remotest posterity. Probably nothing was further from their purpose, which was simply to find a place where they themselves, and all who agreed with them, could enjoy such liberty. This was a desirable object to attain, and they made many sacrifices for it, and felt that they had a right to enjoy it.

The banishment of Roger Williams, and of Mrs. Hutchinson and her sympathizers, was no doubt largely due to the feeling that the peace of the community was endangered by their presence. In the unhappy episode of the Quakers, at a later period, the colonial authorities were wrought into a frenzy by these “persistent intruders.” It seemed to be a struggle on both sides for victory; but though four Quakers were hanged on Boston Common, the Quakers finally conquered. In the second year of the settlement, in order to keep the government in their own hands, or, in the language of the Act, “to the end the body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men,” the Court ordered that thenceforward no one should be elected a freeman unless he was a member of one of the churches of the colony. Probably there were as good men outside the churches as there were inside, and by and by a clamor was raised by those who felt aggrieved at being denied the rights of freemen; but the rule was not modified till after the Restoration.

[This portrait of the first minister of Boston hangs in the gallery of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Its authenticity has been in turn questioned and maintained. Cf. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. September, 1867, and December, 1880.—Ed.]

A few unsavory persons whom Winthrop and his company found here and speedily sent away, on their arrival home failed not to make representations injurious to the Puritan settlement, and they were seconded by the influence of Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason. Attempts were made in 1632 to vacate the colony’s charter; but these attempts proved unsuccessful. A more serious effort was made a few years later, when the Council for New England resigned its franchises into the hands of the King; but owing to the trouble which environed the government in England, and to other causes not fully explained, the colony then escaped, as it also escaped at the same time the impending infliction of a general governor for New England.

In 1640 some of the colony’s friends in England wrote to the authorities here advising them to send some one to England to solicit favors of the Parliament. “But, consulting about it,” says Winthrop, “we declined the motion, for this consideration,—that if we should put ourselves under the protection of Parliament, we must then be subject to all such laws as they should make, or at least such as they might impose upon us; in which course, though they should intend our good, yet it might prove very prejudicial to us.” From 1640 to 1660 the colony was substantially an independent commonwealth, and during this period they completed a system of laws and government which, taken as a whole, was well adapted to their wants. Their “Body of Liberties” was established in 1641, and three editions of Laws were published by authority, and put in print in 1649, in 1660, and in 1672. The first law establishing public schools was passed in October, 1647. Harvard College had already, in 1637, been established at Cambridge.

QUAKER AUTOGRAPHS.

[This group gives the names of some of the victims of the judicial extremities practised in Boston. See Bowden’s Friends in America, and the Memorial History of Boston. Cf. the note on the treatment of the early Quakers in New England, in chapter xii.—Ed.]

The ecclesiastical polity of the churches, embodied in the “Cambridge Platform,” was drawn up in 1648, and printed in the following year, and was finally approved by the General Court in 1651.

The community was obliged to feel its way, and adapt its legislation rather to its exigencies than to its charter. The aristocratical element in the society early cropped out in the institution of a Council for life, which may have had its origin in suggestions from England; but it met with little favor.

The confederation of the United Colonies, first proposed by Connecticut, was an act of great wisdom, foreshadowing the more celebrated political unions of the English race on this continent, for they all have recognized the common maxim, that “Union is strength.” The colonists were surrounded by “people of several nations and strange language,” and the existence of the Indian tribes within the boundaries of the New England settlements was the source of ceaseless anxiety and alarm. The Pequot War had but recently ended, and it had left its warning. It would have been an act of grace to admit the Maine and Narragansett settlements to this union, but it was probably impracticable.

DR. JOHN CLARK.

[This portrait of a leading physician of the colony hangs in the gallery of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and is inscribed “Ætatis suæ 66 ann. suo,” and purports to be a Dr. John Clark, and is probably the physician of that name of Newbury and Boston, who died in 1664. His son John, likewise a physician, was also a prominent public man in Boston, and died in 1690. That it is the former is believed by Dr. Thacher in his American Medical Biography, and by Coffin in his History of Newbury, both of whom give lithographs of the picture. Dr. Appleton, who printed an account of the Society’s portrait in its Proceedings, September, 1867, also took this view; while the Rev. Dr. Harris, in the Society’s Collections, third series, vii. 287, finds the year 1675 in the inscription, which is not there, and identifies the subject of the picture with another Dr. John Clark, who was prominent in Rhode Island history. There was still a third Dr. John Clark, son of John, and of Boston, who died in 1728. It is not probably determinable beyond doubt which of the earlier two this is; and Savage, in his Genealogical Dictionary, gives twenty-five John Clarks as belonging to New England before the end of the first century; but of these only four are physicians, as above named. Cf. Massachusetts Historical Society’s Proceedings, July, 1844, p. 287.—Ed.]

The conversion of the Indian tribes to Christianity was a subject which the colony had much at heart, and a number of its ministers had fitted themselves for the work: the special labors of the Apostle Eliot need only be mentioned. Through the instrumentality of Edward Winslow, a society for propagating the gospel among the Indians was incorporated in England in 1649, and the Commissioners of the United Colonies were made the agents of its corporation as long as the union of the colonies lasted.

The Massachusetts colonists were at first seriously tasked for the means of subsistence; but these anxieties soon passed away. Industry took the most natural forms. Agriculture gave back good returns. To the invaluable Indian maize were added all kinds of English grain, as well as vegetables and fruits. Some were indigenous to the soil. English seeds of hay and of grain returned bountiful crops. All animals with which New England farms are now stocked then well repaid in increase the care bestowed upon them. The manufacture of clothing was of slower growth. Thread and yarn were spun and knit by the women at home; but in a few years weaving and fulling mills were set up, and became remunerative. The manufacture of salt, saltpetre, gunpowder, and glassware gave employment to many, while the brickmaker, the mason, the carpenter, and indeed all kindred trades found occupation. The forests were a source of income. Boards, clapboards, shingles, staves, and, at a later period, masts had a ready sale. Furs and peltry, received in barter from the Indians, became features of an export trade. The fisheries should be specially enumerated as a source of wealth, and this industry led to the building of ships, which were the medium of commerce with the neighboring colonies, the West Indies, and even with Spain.[532]

After the coin brought over by the settlers had gone back to England to pay for supplies, the colony was greatly embarrassed for a circulating medium, and Indian corn and beaver-skins were early used as currency, while wampum was employed in trade with the Indians. The colony, however, in 1652 established a mint, where was coined, from the Spanish silver which had been introduced from the West Indies, and from whatever bullion and plate might be sent in from any quarter, the New England money so well known in our histories of American coinage.[533] The relation of the colony to the surrounding New England plantations is noticed further on in the brief accounts given of those settlements.

Events in England moved rapidly onward. The execution of King Charles occurred about two months before the death of Winthrop, which happened on the 26th of March, 1648/49, and it is certain that the latter never heard of the tragic end of his old master. The colonists prudently acknowledged their subjection to the Parliament, and afterward to Cromwell, so far as was necessary to keep upon terms with both. Hutchinson says that he had nowhere met with any marks of disrespect to the memory of the late king, and that there was no room to suppose they bore any disaffection to his son; and if they feared his restoration, it was because they expected a change in religion, and that a persecution of all Nonconformists would follow. Charles II. was tardily proclaimed in the colony, owing, perhaps, to a lack of definite information as to the state of politics in England, and to rumors that the people there were in an unsettled condition.

[See note on this portrait in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 309.—Ed.]

A loyal address was finally agreed upon and sent; but he was not proclaimed till August of the following year, 1661. The Restoration brought trouble to the colony. Among those who laid their grievances before the King in Council were Mason and Gorges, each a grandson and heir of a more distinguished proprietor of lands in New England. They alleged that the colony had, in violation of the rights of the petitioners, extended its jurisdiction over the provinces of New Hampshire and Maine. The Quakers and some of the Eastern people also had their complaints to make against the colony.

To the humble address made to the King a benignant answer was received; but an order soon afterward came that persons be sent over authorized to make answer for the colony to all complaints alleged against it. These agents on their return brought a letter from the King to the colony, in which he promised to preserve its patent and privileges; but he also required of the colony that its laws should be reviewed, and such as were against the King’s authority repealed; that the oath of allegiance and the forms of justice be administered in the King’s name; that no one who desired to use the book of Common Prayer should be prejudiced thereby as to the baptism of his children or admission to the sacrament or to civil privilege.

These requirements were grievous to the people of Massachusetts; but worse was to come. In the spring of 1664 intelligence was brought that several men-of-war were coming from England with some gentlemen of distinction on board, and preparations were made to receive them. At the next meeting of the General Court a day of fasting and prayer was appointed, and their patent and its duplicate were brought into Court and committed to the charge of four trusty men for safe-keeping. The ships arrived in July, with four commissioners having authority for reducing the Dutch at Manhados, and for visiting the several New England colonies, and hearing and determining all matters of complaint, and settling the peace and security of the country. Proceeding on their errand to the Manhados, the Dutch surrendered on articles.[534] In the mean time an address was agreed upon by the Court to be sent to the King, in which was recounted the sacrifices and early struggles of the colonists, while they prayed for the preservation of their liberties. Colonel Nichols remaining in New York, the other commissioners returned to New England, and, having despatched their business elswhere, came to Boston in May, 1665, after they had been joined by Colonel Nichols. Governor Endicott had died the preceding March, and Mr. Bellingham, the deputy-governor, stood in his place. The commissioners laid their claim before the Court, and demanded an answer. There was skirmishing on both sides. It is a long story, filling many pages of the colony records. The envoys asked to have their commission acknowledged by the government; but this would have overridden the charter of the colony, and placed the inhabitants at the mercy of their enemies. In short, the authorities refused to yield, and the commissioners, after being defeated in other attempts to effect their purpose, were called home. Several letters and addresses followed. Thus ended for a time the contest with the Crown. For nearly ten years there was an almost entire suspension of political relations between New England and the mother country. But the projects of the Home Government were not given over. Gorges and Mason persisted in their claims. In the mean time New England was ravaged by an Indian war, known as Philip’s War. The distress was great, and the loss of life fearful. During its progress Edward Randolph, the evil genius of New England, appeared on the scene, prepared for mischief.

MEETING-HOUSE AT HINGHAM.

[This is considered the oldest meeting-house in present use in New England. It was erected in 1681. Cf. The Commemorative Services of the First Parish in Hingham on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Building of its Meeting-House, Aug. 8, 1881 (Hingham, 1882), with another view of the building,—a photograph; also E. A. Horton’s Discourse, Jan. 8, 1882. A meeting-house of similar type, erected in Lynn in 1682, is represented in Lynn, Her First Two Hundred and Fifty Years, p. 117.

The annexed autographs, taken from a document in the Trumbull Manuscripts, in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Cabinet, and dated 1690, represent some of the leading ministers of the colony at the close of the colonial period. Morton was of Charlestown; Allen of Boston; Wigglesworth, the author of the Day of Doom, a sulphurous poem greatly famous in its day, was of Malden; Moodey was of Portsmouth; Willard and Mather of Boston; and Walter of Roxbury.—Ed.]

He arrived in July, 1676, with a letter from the King and with complaints from Mason and Gorges, and armed with a royal order for agents to be sent to England to make answer. This was but the beginning of the end. The legal authorities in England, before whom the case was brought, decided that neither Maine nor New Hampshire was within the chartered limits of Massachusetts, and that the title of the former was in the grandson of the original proprietor. Whereupon the agent of Massachusetts bought the patent of Maine from its proprietor for £1,250, and stood in his shoes as lord paramount.

This greatly displeased the King, and the hostility to the colony continued. Additional charges, such as illegal coining of money, violations of the laws of trade and navigation, and legislative provisions repugnant to the laws of England and contrary to the power of the charter, were now alleged against the colony. The agents of the colony and the emissaries of the Crown crossed and recrossed the ocean with apologies on the one hand and requisitions on the other; but nothing would satisfy the Crown but the subjugation of the colony. A quo warranto against the Governor and Company was issued in 1683; and finally, by a new suit of scire facias brought in the Court of Chancery, judgment against the Company was entered up Oct. 23, 1684. Intelligence of this was not officially received till the following summer. Meantime the new king, James II., was proclaimed, April 20, 1685. The government of the colony was expiring. The “Rose” frigate arrived in Boston May 14, 1686, bringing a commission for Joseph Dudley as President of the Council for Massachusetts Bay, New Hampshire, and Maine, and the Narraganset country, or King’s Province. There was no House of Deputies to oppose him. Dudley was succeeded by Sir Edmund Andros on the 19th of December, who had arrived in the frigate “Kingfisher,” with a commission for the government of New England. He was detested by the colony, and the people only needed a rumor of the revolution in England, which reached Boston in the spring of 1689, to provoke a rising, and he was thrown into prison.[535] A provisional government, with the old charter-officers, was instituted, and continued till the new charter of 1691 was inaugurated.

Maine.—There were many settlements on the coast of Maine prior to the grant to Gorges from the Council in 1635, and consequently before his subsequent charter from the King. Indeed, very little was done by Gorges as Lord Proprietor of Maine. The patents from the Council to the year 1633 had embraced the whole territory from Piscataqua to Penobscot, thus including the territory on both sides the Kennebec, which was claimed by the Pilgrims of Plymouth under their patent of Jan. 13, 1629/30. In various places settlements had already been begun. In the royal charter to Gorges, whose grant extended from Piscataqua to Sagadahoc, the rights of previous grantees were reserved to them, they relinquishing or laying down their jura regalia.

The earliest permanent settlement in this State, on the mainland, would seem to have been made at Pemaquid. One John Brown, of New Harbor, bought land in that quarter of the Indians as early as July 15, 1625, the acknowledgment of the deed being taken by Abraham Shurt, of Pemaquid, in the same month in the following year, if there is no error in Shurt’s deposition. Shurt says that he came over as the agent of the subsequent proprietors, Aldsworth and Elbridge, who had a grant of Pemaquid from the Council, issued Feb. 29, 1631/32, and that he bought for them the Island of Monhegan, on which a fishing settlement, temporarily broken up in 1626, was made three years before.

The settlement at the mouth of the Saco River must have begun soon after Richard Vines took possession of his grant there in 1630. During the same year Cleeves and Tucker settled near the mouth of the Spurwink; but in two years they removed to the neck of land on which Portland now stands, and laid the foundation of that city. In applications to the Council for grants of land made respectively to Walter Bagnall and John Stratton, Dec. 2, 1631, the former represents himself to have lived in New England “for the space of seven years,” and the latter “three years last past.” Bagnall’s patent included Richmond Island, where he had lived some three years at least. He was killed by the Indians two months before the Council acted upon his application. Stratton’s grant was located at Cape Porpoise. Bagnall probably had been one of Thomas Morton’s unruly crew at Mt. Wollaston, in Boston Harbor.

In 1630 what is known as the “Plough Patent” was issued by the Council. The original parchment is lost, and it is nowhere recorded. The grant was bounded on the east by Cape Elizabeth, and on the west by Cape Porpoise, a distance of some thirty miles on the sea-coast. This included the patents on the Saco River previously granted, against which Vines protested. There was early a dispute as to its extent. The holders of it came over in the ship “Plough,” in 1631. They went to the eastward; but not liking the place, came to Boston. They subsequently fell out among themselves, and, as Winthrop says, “vanished away.” Afterward the patent fell into the hands of others, and played an important part for a number of years in the history of Maine, of which notice will be taken further on.

On Dec. 2, 1631, a grant of land of twenty-four thousand acres in extent was made to a number of persons, including Ferdinando Gorges, a grandson of Sir Ferdinando, then some three years of age. This territory was on both sides of the Acomenticus River. Some settlements were made here about this time, and April 10, 1641, after the Gorges government was established, the borough of Acomenticus was incorporated, and in the following March the place was chartered as the city of “Gorgeana.”

There were other early settlements on the coast of Maine, but we have no space for their enumeration. The inhabitants, really or nominally, for the most part sympathized with the Loyalist party as well in politics as in religion, and it was the policy of the proprietor of Maine to foster no opposing views. They were subjected to no external government until the arrival of Captain William Gorges, in 1636, as deputy-governor, with commissions to Richard Vines and others as councillors of the province, to which the name of “New Somersetshire” was given. The first meeting of the commissioners was held at Saco, March 25, 1636, where the first provincial jurisdiction in this section of New England was exercised. The records of this province do not extend beyond 1637, and it is uncertain whether the courts continued to be held until the new organization of the government of Maine in 1640. In 1636 George Cleeves, a disaffected person who lived at Casco, went to England, and next year returned with a commission from Sir Ferdinando Gorges, authorizing several persons in Massachusetts Bay to govern his province of New Somersetshire, and to oversee his servants, etc. The authorities of the Bay declined the service, and the matter “passed in silence.” Winthrop says they did not see what authority Gorges had to grant such commissions.

The charter of Maine, which covered the same territory as New Somersetshire, having been granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, he issued a commission for its government. This included a number of his kinsmen, with Thomas Gorges as deputy-governor. The first General Court under this government was held at Saco, June 25, 1640, under an earlier commission and before the arrival of the deputy-governor. This Court exercised the powers of an executive and legislative, as well as of a judicial, body, in the name of “Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Knight, Lord Proprietor of the Province of Maine.” The second term of the Court was held in September, when the Deputy-Governor was present. He made his headquarters at Gorgeana. The records of the courts between 1641 and 1644, inclusive, are not preserved. Deputy-Governor Gorges sailed for England in 1643, leaving Richard Vines at the head of the government. At a meeting held at Saco in 1645, the Court, not having heard from the proprietor, appointed Richard Vines deputy-governor for one year, and if he departed within the year, Henry Josselyn was to take his place. The civil war was raging in England at this time, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges was active for the King, and was in Prince Rupert’s army at the siege of Bristol. When that city was retaken by the Parliamentary forces, in 1645, he was plundered and imprisoned. Under these circumstances he had no time to give to his distant province. In 1645 the Court ordered that Richard Vines shall have power to take possession of all goods and chattels of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and to pay such debts as Gorges may owe.

But Gorges’ authority was not, meanwhile, without its rival. Not long after the government under the charter of 1639 had been organized, George Cleeves, of Casco, again went to England, and induced Alexander Rigby, “a lawyer and Parliament-man,” from Wigan, Lancashire, to purchase the abandoned Plough patent before mentioned, which he did, April 7, 1643; and Cleeves received a commission from him, as deputy, to administer its affairs. By the following January he had returned, and, landing at Boston, he solicited the aid of the Massachusetts Government against the authority of Gorges; but that Government declined to interfere. Cleeves claimed that Casco was within the bounds of his patent, and he immediately set up his authority as “Deputy-President of the Province of Lygonia,” extending his jurisdiction over a large part of the Province of Maine, which was then under the administration of Richard Vines, as deputy for Gorges. This produced a collision, and both parties appealed to Massachusetts, which declined, as before, to act; but finally, in 1646, after Vines had left the country, the Bay Government consented to serve as umpire; but no conclusion was reached. Winthrop says that both parties failed of proof; and as a joint appeal had been made to the Commissioners for Foreign Plantations in England, they were advised in the mean time to live peaceably together. Rigby’s position and influence in Parliament secured a decision in his favor, while Gorges at that time was in no position to protect his interests. The decision of the Commissioners, which was given in 1646, terminated Gorges’ jurisdiction over that part of Maine included in the Province of Lygonia, embracing the settlements from Casco to Cape Porpoise, and including both. The last General Court under the authority of Gorges, of which any record exists, was held at Wells, in July of this year.

At length, in 1649, the inhabitants of the western part of this province, between Cape Porpoise and Piscataqua River,—including Wells, Gorgeana, and Piscataqua,—having had intelligence in 1647 of the death of the proprietor (Gorges died in May of that year, and was buried on the fourteenth of the month), and finding no one in authority there, and having in vain written to his heirs to ascertain their wishes, formed a combination among themselves. Mr. Edward Godfrey was chosen governor, the style of the “Province of Maine” being still retained. This state of things continued till 1652/53, when the towns were annexed to Massachusetts. The inhabitants then living between Casco and the Kennebec were few in number. Thomas Purchase, one of the proprietors of the Pejepscot patent, had, in 1639, conveyed a large tract to Massachusetts with alleged powers of government over it. The people living within the Kennebec patent were regarded as belonging to the jurisdiction of New Plymouth.

In the mean time the inhabitants under the Lygonia government quietly submitted to its authority. Alexander Rigby died in August, 1650, and the proprietorship of Lygonia fell to his son Edward. In brief, the government was soon at an end. The inhabitants of Cape Porpoise and Saco submitted to Massachusetts in 1652, and the remaining settlements in 1658. Thus was accomplished what the Bay Colony had for some time been aiming to effect,—the bringing of these eastern settlements under her jurisdiction. Having decided that the northern boundary of her patent extended three miles above the northernmost head of the Merrimac River, the commissioners appointed on a recent survey showed that the northern line, as run by them, terminated at Clapboard Island (about three miles eastward of Casco peninsula); and this brought the Maine settlements within the bounds of the Massachusetts charter. This state of things continued till after the restoration of Charles II., when the hopes of those favorable to the Gorges interest began to revive. Young Ferdinando Gorges, the grandson and heir of the old proprietor, petitioned the Crown to be restored to his inheritance. His agent, Mr. Archdale, came into the province, and appointed magistrates to act under his authority, but the Government of Massachusetts speedily repressed all such movements. Charles II., however, soon directed his attention to New England. He appointed four commissioners to proceed thither, charged with important duties and clothed with large powers. They, or three of them, visited the province in the summer of 1665, and at York issued a proclamation to the inhabitants of Maine, requiring them to submit to the immediate protection and government of the King; and in his Majesty’s name forbidding the magistrates either of Massachusetts or of the claimant to exercise jurisdiction there, until his Majesty’s pleasure should be further known. A provisional government was therefore established, and the revival of the Church of England was encouraged.

In the previous year the Duke of York received a charter of the Province of New York, and, embraced within the same document, was a grant of the territories between the St. Croix and Pemaquid, which was interpreted to include Pemaquid and its dependencies; and a government was subsequently erected there under the name of Cornwall County. After the Duke became King it was a royal province. This was beyond the eastern bounds of the Province of Maine. There had scarcely been even a pretence of a civil government here under the old patents. The Royal Commissioners speak of the low moral condition of the people of this region. “For the most part,” they say, “they are fishermen, and share in their wives as they do in their boats.” The government under the Duke of York was of an uncertain character, and was subject to the contingencies of political changes; and in 1674 the Government of Massachusetts, on the petition of the inhabitants, took them for a time under its protection. During the Indian wars which scourged the eastern settlements, in the latter part of that century, the Pemaquid country was wholly depopulated.

The Government established by the Royal Commissioners in the Province of Maine never possessed any permanent principle or power to give sanction to its authority, and in 1668 it had nearly died out; at this time the inhabitants there looked to the wise and stable Government of Massachusetts for relief, and so petitioned to be again taken under its jurisdiction. Four commissioners, therefore, accompanied by a military escort were sent from the Bay, and reaching York in July, 1668, assumed jurisdiction “by virtue of their charter.” There were a few prominent individuals who did not quietly submit, but they were summarily dealt with. Renewed exertions were now made by the proprietor and his friends for a recognition of his title, and at length they so far prevailed as to obtain letters from the King, dated March 10, 1675/76, requiring the Massachusetts Colony to send over agents with full instructions to answer all complaints. The agents appeared within the time specified, and after a full hearing the authorities decided that neither Maine nor New Hampshire was within the chartered limits of Massachusetts, and that the government of Maine belonged to the heir of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Soon after this decision an agent of Massachusetts made a proposition for the purchase of the province, which was accepted; and in March, 1677/78, Ferdinando Gorges transferred his title for £1,250, and Massachusetts became lord-paramount of Maine. This proceeding was a surprise to the inhabitants of the province, and, as might have been expected, gave offence to the King, who ineffectually demanded that the bargain should be cancelled. Massachusetts, as the lawful assign of Ferdinando Gorges, now took possession of the province. A proclamation to that effect was issued March 17, 1679/80; and a government was set up at York, of which Thomas Danforth was deputed to be president for one year. This state of things continued till the accession of James II., when the events in Maine were shaped by the revolution which took place in Massachusetts, and Danforth was in the end provisionally restored, as Bradstreet had been in the Bay.

New Hampshire.—The first settlement in New Hampshire was made by David Thomson, a Scotchman, in the spring of 1623, at Little Harbor, on the south side of the mouth of Piscataqua River. He had received a patent from the Council of New England the year before, and came over in the ship “Jonathan,” of Plymouth, under an indentured agreement with three merchants of Plymouth in England. He lived at Little Harbor till 1626, when he removed to an island in Boston Harbor, which now bears his name. By 1628 he had died, leaving a wife and child. There is reason to believe that the settlement at Little Harbor was continued after Thomson left the place.

Following Thomson,—perhaps about 1627,—came Edward Hilton, a fishmonger of London, who settled six miles up the river, on a place afterward called Hilton’s Point, or Dover Neck. Here he was joined by a few others, including his brother William and his family, who had been at New Plymouth. In 1630 Hilton and his associates received from the Council a patent of the place on which he was settled. This was dated March 12, 1629 (O. S.), and the whole or part of it they soon sold to some merchants of Bristol in England. Two years later the patent, or a large interest in it, was purchased by Lord Say, Lord Brook, and other gentlemen friendly to Massachusetts. This latter agreement was effected through the agency of Thomas Wiggin, who had gone over to England in 1632, and who in the following year returned, bringing with him a large accession to the settlement, which included a “worthy Puritan divine,” who soon left for want of adequate support. Other ministers came, and some laymen, all of whom had been in bad repute in Massachusetts. Although the inhabitants went through the form of electing magistrates, there was no authorized government. The original proprietor of the patent had left the place, and scenes of confusion, both civil and ecclesiastical, sometimes highly amusing, characterized the settlement for a number of years. In 1637 the people combined into a body politic, which seems not to have received general sanction, and the notorious George Burdett supplanted Wiggin, the former governor; but the troubles which subsequently ensued led to a new combination, Oct. 22, 1640, signed by forty-two persons, or nearly every resident. Massachusetts had for some years desired to bring the several governments on the Piscataqua and its branches under her jurisdiction, and had, by an early revision of the northern boundary of her patent, decided that it included them. The inhabitants here desired to be under a stable government, and on June 14, 1641, they submitted to the Massachusetts authorities, and the Act of Union was passed by that Government, Oct. 9 following.[536]

The next independent settlement was made by the Laconia Company in 1630. This company was formed soon after the Laconia patent of Nov. 17, 1629, was granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason. It was an unincorporated association of nine persons, most of whose names appear in a subsequent grant of land, to be presently mentioned. Some of these associates had been members of the Canada Company, of which Sir William Alexander was the head, who had undertaken the conquest of Canada as a private enterprise, under the command of Sir David Kirke. The fur-trade of that province was the tempting prize. The sudden peace which followed the conquest, with the stipulation that all articles captured should be restored, brought the Canada Company to grief. Ten days after the return of the expedition, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason took out the patent above mentioned. The purpose of the Company was to engage in the fur-trade; to send cargoes of Indian truck-goods to the Piscataqua and unlade them at their factories near the mouth of the river, and thence to transport them in boats or canoes up the river to Lake Champlain, to be bartered there for peltries for the European market. Their patent was a grant of a vaguely bounded territory on the lakes of the Iroquois, which they named Laconia. The first vessel despatched to Piscataqua was the barque “Warwick,” which sailed from London the last of March, 1630, and which by the first of June had arrived, with Walter Neal, governor, and Ambrose Gibbons, factor, and some others. They took possession of the house and land at Odiorne’s Point, Little Harbor, which Thomson had left in 1626,—perhaps by an agreement with his associates. In the following year others were sent. Stations for the Company’s operations were also established at Strawberry Bank (Portsmouth), and at Newichwaneck (South Berwick), on the eastern side of the river. Captain Neal was charged with the duty of penetrating into the interior of the country in search of the lakes of Laconia. This he finally attempted, but without success. Hubbard says that “after three years spent in labor and travel for that end, or other fruitless endeavors, and expense of too much estate, they returned back to England with a non est inventa Provincia.” The Company also attempted to carry on, in connection with the peltry business, the manufacture of clapboards and pipe-staves, and the making of salt from sea-water. A fishing station was also set up at the Isles of Shoals. Large quantities of truck-goods were sent over, which were put off to advantage for furs brought to the factories by the Indians. In order to afford the Company greater facilities, and to secure to themselves what they had already gained, they had, on Nov. 3, 1631, procured a grant from the Council of a tract of land on each side of the Piscataqua River, in which the Isles of Shoals were included.

But success did not attend their operations. The returns were inadequate to the outlay, and there was bad management and alleged bad faith on the part of the employés; the larger part of the associates became discouraged, and at the end of the third year they decided to proceed no further till Captain Neal should return and report upon the condition of affairs. Neal left Piscataqua July 15, 1633, and sailed from Boston in August. His report was probably not encouraging, for the Company proceeded later to wind up its affairs, and in December following they divided their lands on the east side of the river. In May, 1634, a further division was made, by which it appears that Gorges and Mason, by purchase from their partners, had acquired one half of the shares; and of this part Mason owned three fourths. Gibbons, their factor, was now directed to discharge all the servants and pay them off in beaver. Mason next sent over a new supply of men, and set up two saw-mills on his own portion of the lands; but after this we have no account of anything being done by him or by any other of the adventurers on the west side. Neither have we seen evidence of any division of lands having been made on the west side. Hubbard says that in some “after division” Little Harbor fell to Mason, who mentions it in his will. But Mason in that instrument claims and bequeaths his whole grant of New Hampshire of April 22, 1635, which included the part mentioned by Hubbard. Mason died before the close of the year 1635. What course was taken by his late partners or by the heirs of Mason during the two following years, there are but few contemporary documents to tell us. In 1638 Mrs. Mason, the executrix of John Mason’s estate, appointed Francis Norton her general attorney to look after her interests in those parts. But the expenses were found to be so great and the income so small, and the servants were so clamorous for their arrears of pay, that she was obliged to relinquish the care of the plantation, and tell the servants to shift for themselves. Upon this they shared the goods and cattle, while some kept possession of the buildings and improvements, claiming them as their own. Charges were afterward brought against her agents and servants for embezzling the estate. Some years later suits were brought in her name and in that of the other proprietors in the courts of Massachusetts against the inhabitants of Strawberry Bank and of Newichwaneck, for encroaching upon the lands in the Laconia patent. As a conclusion of this summary sketch of the Laconia Company, it may be added that the records of the old Court of Requests of London show that, on the dissolution of the Company, suits sprang up among the adventurers themselves, which were for a long time in litigation.

After Captain Neal went to England the Company appointed Francis Williams to be governor in his place. As Strawberry Bank (the place was not called Portsmouth till 1653) had no efficient government during all this time, the inhabitants now by a written instrument, signed by forty-one persons, formed a combination among themselves, as Dover had done, and Francis Williams was continued governor. The people belonged principally to the Church of England, and during this combination they set apart fifty acres of land for a glebe, committing it in trust to two church wardens.[537] Reference has already been made to the successful attempts of the Massachusetts Government to bring all the Piscataqua settlements under her jurisdiction. The people of Strawberry Bank were as successfully wrought upon as those of Dover were, and the same agreement of June 14, 1641, included the submission of both, and certain proprietors named, in behalf of themselves and of the other partners of the two patents, subscribed to the paper.

Of no one of the grants issued to John Mason, or in which he had a joint interest, covering the territory of New Hampshire (except those connected with the Laconia Company) did he make any improvement,—and these grants were that of Aug. 10, 1622, with Gorges, between the Merrimac and Sagadahoc; that of Nov. 7, 1629, between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua; and that of April 22, 1635, between Naumkeag and the Piscataqua. The territory now known as New Hampshire was never called by that name, except by Mason in his last will, till 1661, when, through the discussions consequent upon the claims of the heir of Mason, this designation was introduced for the first time.

The independent settlement at Exeter was made in 1638 by John Wheelwright and others; and of these pioneers Wheelwright himself with some companions had been banished from Massachusetts in the previous year. They bought their lands in April of that year from the Indians. On the 5th of June, 1639, they formed a combination as a church and as subjects of King Charles, promising to submit to all laws to be made. It was signed by thirty-one persons, of whom fourteen made their marks. In 1643 they came under Massachusetts. The order of the General Court of that colony recites, under date of September 7, that, finding themselves within the bounds of Massachusetts, the inhabitants petitioned to be taken under her jurisdiction. Wheelwright then removed to Wells, in the Province of Maine.

Hampton, where the “bound-house” was built by Massachusetts in 1636, was considered from the first as belonging to the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. A union having been thus formed between the settlements on the Piscataqua River and its branches and the colony of Massachusetts, their history for the next forty years is substantially the same. These plantations were governed by the general laws of Massachusetts, and the terms of union were strictly observed.[538]

But Massachusetts was destined to be arraigned by the heir of the old patentee of New Hampshire, Robert Tufton Mason, who at the Restoration pressed his claim on the attention of the Crown. Finally, after a long struggle, the judges in 1677 advised that Mason had no right to the government of New Hampshire, but that the four towns of Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter, and Hampton were beyond the bounds of Massachusetts, whose northern boundary was thereby driven back to its old limits, while its charter of 1629 was held to be valid. In 1679 a revised opinion was given by the attorney, Jones, to the effect that Mason’s title to the soil must be tried on the spot, where the ter-tenants could be summoned. A new government was now instituted by the Crown for New Hampshire, and a commission was issued to John Cutt as president for one year.

This form of government, the administration of which was arbitrary and very unpopular throughout the province, continued till the time of Dudley and Andros, whose commissions rode over all others preceding. On the downfall of Andros New Hampshire was for a short time again united to Massachusetts.

Connecticut.—Connecticut was settled in 1635 and 1636 by emigrants from three towns in Massachusetts,—namely, Dorchester, Watertown, and Newtown (Cambridge); those from Newtown arriving in 1636. Their places of settlement on the Connecticut River bore for a while the names of the towns in Massachusetts whence the emigrants came; but in February, 1637, the names of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford were substituted.

The Rev. Thomas Hooker and the Rev. Samuel Stone accompanied the people from Newtown. The Rev. John Warham joined his people at Windsor, and the Rev. Henry Smith was chosen pastor of the church at Wethersfield. These several communities, though beyond the borders of Massachusetts, were instituted under her protection, and for one year they were governed by a commission issuing from the General Court of that colony. Springfield, settled in 1636, was in this commission united with the lower plantations. This provisional arrangement was found to be inconvenient, and at the end of the year the several towns took the government into their own hands, and a General Court was held at Hartford, May 1, 1637. Preparations were now made for the impending Pequot war, which called out all the strength of the feeble settlements. On its conclusion, after arrangements had been made for future security from savage foes, and for the purchase of food till the new fields should become productive, the inhabitants of these towns—Springfield, now suspected, and soon afterward declared, to be within the bounds of Massachusetts, excepted—formed a constitution among themselves, bearing date Jan. 14, 1638/39. This instrument has been called “the first example in history of a written constitution,—a distinct organic law constituting a government and defining its powers.”[539] It contained no recognition of any external authority, and provided that all persons should be freemen, who should be admitted as such by the freemen of the towns, and should take the oath of allegiance. It continued in force, with little alteration, for one hundred and eighty years.

John Haynes[540] was the first governor; and he and Edward Hopkins held the office during most of the time for the next fifteen years. In 1657 John Winthrop, son of the Massachusetts governor, was chosen, and continued to serve till the acceptance of the new charter by New Haven, when he was continued in that office.

[This portrait hangs in the gallery of the Massachusetts Historical Society. A heliotype of it will be found in the Winthrop Papers, Part iv., and in Bowen’s Boundary Disputes of Connecticut.—Ed.]

Meanwhile, in October, 1635, this same John Winthrop, Jr., had returned from England with a commission from Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brook, and others, their associates, patentees of Connecticut, constituting him “governor of the River Connecticut, with the places adjoining,” for the space of one whole year. He was instructed to build a fort near the mouth of the river, and to erect habitations; and he was supplied with means to carry out this purpose. He brought over with him one Lion Gardiner, an expert engineer, who planned the fortifications, and was appointed lieutenant-governor of the fort. It was expected that a number of “gentlemen of quality” would come over to the colony, and some disposition was at first shown to remove the settlers of the towns on the river who had “squatted” on the lands of the Connecticut patentees.

In the summer of 1639 George Fenwick, who was interested in the patent, and his family came over in behalf of the patentees, and took possession of the place, intending to build a town near the mouth of the river. A settlement was made, and named Saybrook, in honor of the two principal patentees. The government of the town was entirely independent of Connecticut till 1644/45, when Fenwick, as agent of the proprietors, transferred by contract to that government the fort at Saybrook and its appurtenances, and the land upon the river, with a pledge to convey all the land thence to Narragansett River, if it came into his power to convey it.

[The editor is indebted to Professor F. B. Dexter, of Yale College, for a photograph of the original picture, which is in New Haven, painted on panel, and bears the inscription, “J. D. obiit, 1670.” Davenport left Connecticut in 1668 to become the successor of John Wilson in Boston, and died as the pastor of the First Church in Boston, March 11, 1670. Cf. Memorial History of Boston, i. 193, and the important paper on Davenport by Professor Dexter, printed in the New Haven Historical Society’s Papers, vol. ii.—Ed.]

In 1638 a settlement was made at Quinnipiack, afterward called New Haven, under the lead of John Davenport. The emigrants, principally from Massachusetts,—like those of the river towns,—had no patent or title to the land on which they planted, but made a number of purchases from the Indians. Here, in April, under the shelter of an oak, they listened to a sermon by Davenport, and a few days afterward formed a “plantation covenant,” as preliminary to a more formal engagement,—all agreeing to be ordered by the rule of Scripture. This colony, as well as that just described, sympathized substantially in religious views with Massachusetts.

On the 4th of June, 1639, all the free planters met in a barn “to consult about settling civil government according to God.” Mr. Davenport prayed and preached, and they then proceeded, by his advice, to form a government. They first decided that none but church members should be free burgesses. Twelve men were then chosen, who out of their own number chose seven to constitute a church and on the “seven pillars” thus chosen rested also the responsibility of forming the civil government. On October 29 these seven persons met, and, after a solemn address to the Supreme Being, proceeded to form the body of freemen, and to elect their civil officers. Theophilus Eaton was chosen to be governor for that year; indeed, he continued to be rechosen to the office for nearly twenty years, till his death. This was the original, fundamental constitution of New Haven. A few general rules were adopted, but no code of laws established. The Word of God was to be taken as the rule in all things.

CONNECTICUT RIVER, 1661.

[This is taken from a Dutch map which appeared at Middleburgh and the Hague in 1666, in a tract belonging to the controversy between Sir George Downing and the States General. It follows the fac-simile given in the Lenox edition of Mr. H. C. Murphy’s translation of the Vertoogh van Nieu Nederland. It also is found as a marginal map in the Pas Kaart van de Zee Kusten van Nieu Nederland, published at Amsterdam by Van Keulen, which shows the coast from Narragansett Bay to Sandy Hook, where is also a portion of the map of the Hudson given in the notes following Mr. Fernow’s chapter in Vol. IV. The Pas Kaart is in Harvard College Library (Atlas 700, No. 9). No. 10 of the same atlas is Pas Kaart van de Zee Kusten inde Boght van Nieu Engeland, which shows the coast from Nantucket to Nova Scotia.—Ed.]

This year settlements were made at Milford and at Guilford, each for a time being independent of any other plantation. Connecticut had also interposed two new settlements between New Haven and the Dutch, at Fairfield and at Stratford.

In 1642 the capital laws of Connecticut were completed and put upon record; and in May, 1650, a code of laws known as “Mr. Ludlow’s Code” was adopted. In 1643 Connecticut and New Haven were both included in the New England Confederation, as mentioned on an earlier page, and the articles of union were printed in 1656, with the code of laws which was adopted by New Haven, as drawn up by Governor Eaton, the manuscript having been sent to England to be printed.

The old patent of Connecticut mentioned in the agreement with Fenwick seems never to have been made over to the colony; and they were very anxious, on the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, for a royal charter, which would secure to them a continuance and confirmation of their rights and privileges. Governor John Winthrop was appointed as agent to represent the colony in England, for this purpose; and in April, 1662, he succeeded in procuring a charter, which included the colony of New Haven. The charter conveyed most ample powers and privileges for colonial government, and confirmed or conveyed the whole tract of country which had been granted to Lord Say and Sele and others. Mr. Davenport and other leading men of that colony were entirely opposed to a union with Connecticut; and the acceptance of the new charter was resisted till 1665, when the opposition was overcome, and the colonies became united, and at the general election in May of that year John Winthrop was elected to be governor.

It is needless to say that the church polity of Connecticut and New Haven, from the beginning, was substantially that of Massachusetts. Their clergymen assisted in framing the Cambridge Platform in 1648, which was the guide of the churches for many years. Hooker’s Survey and Cotton’s Way of the Churches Cleared (London, 1648) were published under one general titlepage covering both works. After a few years the harmony of the churches was seriously disturbed by a set of new opinions which sprang up in the church at Hartford, and which finally culminated in the adoption by a general council of Connecticut and Massachusetts churches, held in Boston in 1657, of the “Half-Way Covenant.” New Haven held aloof. Political motives lent their influence in the spread of the new views; and while the government of Connecticut attempted to enforce the resolutions of the synod, the churches long refused to comply.[541]

The union of the two communities under one charter gave strength to both, and the colony prospered, while Winthrop felt the strong control of a robust spirit in John Allyn, the secretary of the colony.[542] There were of course constant occasions of annoyance and dissension, both civil and religious. Their wily foe, the Indian, did not cease wholly to disturb their repose. But during Philip’s War, which was so disastrous to Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Rhode Island, there was less suffering in Connecticut. Conflicts of jurisdiction, both east and west, growing out of the uncertain boundaries of its grant, though it ran west to the South Sea, were of long duration. No sooner had the commissioners, appointed by the King in 1683, made a favorable decision for Connecticut in her controversy with Rhode Island in regard to the Narragansett country, than a new claimant arose. At the division of the grand patent in 1635, James, Marquis of Hamilton, had assigned to him the country between the Connecticut and the Narragansett rivers; but his claim slumbered only to be revived by his heirs at the Restoration,—and now a second time, through Edward Randolph, the watchful and untiring enemy of New England. The prior grant to Lord Say and Sele, confirmed by the charter of April 23, 1662, and the settlement of the country under it, was cited by Connecticut in their answer; and, in an opinion on the case a few years later, Sir Francis Pemberton said that the answer was a good one.

When James II. continued the attacks on the New England charters begun by the late king, with a view to bring all the colonies under the crown, Connecticut did not escape. A quo warranto was issued against the Governor and Company in July, 1685, and this was followed by notices to appear and defend; but the colony resisted, and petitioned, and final judgment was never entered. The colony’s language to the King in one of its addresses to him was, however, construed as a surrender. Andros went from Boston to Hartford in October, 1687, and at a meeting of the Assembly, which was prolonged till midnight, demanded its charter. The story goes, that, by a bold legerdemain, the parchment, after the lights were blown out, was spirited away and hidden in the hollow of an oak-tree; nevertheless Andros assumed the government of the colony, under his commission. Thus matters continued till the Revolution of 1689, when the colony resumed its charter.

Rhode Island.—Rhode Island was settled by Roger Williams in 1636, he having been banished from Massachusetts the year before. Professor George Washington Greene, in his Short History of Rhode Island, remarks, that in the settlement of the New England colonies the religious idea lay at the root of their foundation and development; that in Plymouth it took the form of separation, or a simple severance from the Church of England; in Massachusetts Bay it aimed at the establishment of a theocracy and the enforcement of a vigorous uniformity of creed and discipline; and that from the resistance to this uniformity came Rhode Island and the doctrine of soul-liberty.

Williams was banished from Massachusetts principally for political reasons. His peculiar opinions relating to soul-liberty were not fully developed until after he had taken up his residence in Rhode Island. Five persons accompanied him to the banks of the Mooshausic, and there they planted the town of Providence. Williams here purchased, or received by gift, a tract of land from the Indians, and he had no patent or other title to the soil. Additions were soon made to the little settlement, and he divided the land with twelve of his companions, reserving for them and himself the right of extending the grant to others who might be admitted to fellowship. An association of civil government was formed among the householders or masters of families, who agreed to be governed by the orders of the greater number. This was followed by another agreement of non-householders or single persons, who agreed to subject themselves to such orders as should be made by the householders, but “only in civil things.” This latter is the earliest agreement on the records of the colony. In 1639, to meet the wants of an increasing community, five disposers or selectmen were chosen, charged with political duties,—their actions being subject to revision by the superior authority of the town meetings.

Meanwhile two other colonies had been planted on the shores of Narragansett Bay. The first, partly from the ranks of the Antinomians of Massachusetts, led by William Coddington and John Clarke, who settled at Pocasset (Portsmouth), in the northern part of the Island of Aquedneck in March, 1637/38; and their number so increased that in the following year, 1639, a portion of them moved to the south part of the island, and settled the town of Newport. Like Roger Williams, the settlers had no other title to the land than what was obtained from the natives. Another colony was planted at Shawomet (Warwick), in January, 1642/43, by Samuel Gorton,—a notorious disturber of the peace,—with about a dozen followers, who also secured an Indian title to their lands. Gorton had been in Boston, Plymouth, Portsmouth, and in Providence, and was an unwelcome resident in all, and at Portsmouth he had been whipped.

About 1640, with some followers, he came to Pawtuxet, in the south part of Providence, and, taking sides in some previous land quarrel there, prevailed. The weaker party appealed to Massachusetts for protection, and finally subjected themselves and their lands to that government; upon which Gorton and his followers fled south to Shawomet. Soon afterward, by the surrender to Massachusetts of a subordinate Indian chief, who claimed the territory there, purchased by Gorton of Miantonomi, that Government made a demand of jurisdiction there also; and as Gorton refused their summons to appear at Boston, Massachusetts sent soldiers, and captured the inhabitants in their homes, took them to Boston, tried them, and sentenced the greater part of them to imprisonment for blasphemous language to the Massachusetts authorities. They were finally liberated, and banished; and as Warwick was included in the forbidden territory, they went to Rhode Island. Gorton and two of his friends soon afterward went to England.

The inhabitants on the island formed themselves into a voluntary association of government, as they had done at Providence. The community at Warwick was at first without any form of government.

Feeling a sense of a common danger, the little settlements of Providence and Rhode Island sent Roger Williams to England, in 1643, to apply for a charter. He found the King at open war with the Parliament; but from the Parliamentary commissioners, with the Earl of Warwick at their head, he procured a charter of “Incorporation of Providence Plantations in the Narragansett Bay in New England,” dated March 14, 1643; that is, 1644 (N. S.). Three years were allowed to pass before the charter was formally accepted by the plantations; but in May, 1647, the corporators met at Portsmouth, and organized a government; and Warwick, whither Gorton and his followers had now returned, though not named in the charter, was admitted to its privileges. This franchise was a charter of incorporation, as its title indicates; but it contained no grant of land. It recites the purchase of lands from the natives; and the Government under it claimed the exclusive right to extinguish the Indian title to lands still owned by the tribes within its boundaries. The code of laws adopted when the charter was accepted is an attempt to codify the common and statute laws of England, or such parts as were thought binding or would suit their condition.

Williams’s principle of liberty of conscience was sometimes interpreted in the community to mean freedom from civil restraint, and harmony did not always prevail. This gave cause to his enemies to exult, while his friends feared lest their hope of reconciling liberty and law should fail.

The attempt of Massachusetts to bring the territory of the colony under her jurisdiction was a source of great annoyance. During this contest an appeal to the authorities in England resulted in the triumph of the weaker colony. Then came the “Coddington usurpation,”—an unexplained episode in the history of Rhode Island, by which the island towns in 1651 were severed from the government of the colony; and Coddington, by a commission from the Council of State in England, was made governor for life. This revolution seemed for a time successful; but the friends of the colony did not despair. Williams and John Clarke were sent to England as agents,—the one in behalf of the former charter, and the other to ask for a revocation of Coddington’s commission. They were both successful; and in the following year the old civil status was fully restored.

As civil dissensions ceased, there was danger of another Indian war, which for the time was arrested by the sagacity of Williams. The refusal of the United Colonies to admit Rhode Island to their confederacy placed her at great disadvantage. Yet though causes of dissension remained, the colony grew in industry and strength. Newport especially increased in population and in wealth. Not every inhabitant, however, was a freeman. The suffrage was restricted to ownership in land, and there was a long process of initiation to be passed through before a candidate could be admitted to full citizenship.

Changes were taking place in England. Cromwell died, and his son Richard soon afterward resigned the Protectorship. The restoration of Charles II. followed by acclamation. The colony hastened to acknowledge the new King; the acts of the Long Parliament were abrogated, and a new charter was applied for through John Clarke, who still remained in England. This instrument, dated Nov. 24, 1663, was evidently drawn up by Clarke, or was prepared under his supervision. It confirmed to the inhabitants freedom of conscience in matters of religion. It recounted the purchase of the land from the natives, but it equally asserted the royal prerogative and the ultimate dominion of the lands in the Crown,—a provision which Williams had strenuously objected to and preached against in the Massachusetts charter. The holding was from the King, as of the manner of East Greenwich. This gave the colony, in English law, an absolute title to the soil as against any foreign State or its subjects. It operated practically as a pre-emptive right to extinguish the Indian title. The charter created a corporation by the name of “The Governor and Company of the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England in America.”

THE MASSACHUSETTS PROPRIETORS OF THE NARRAGANSETT COUNTRY.

This charter gave the whole of the Narragansett country to the colony, which the year before had been given to Connecticut; but it did not bring peace. That colony still clamored for her charter boundary; while a body of land speculators from Massachusetts, known as the Atherton Company, who had, in violation of Rhode Island law, bought lands at Quidnesett and Namcook, now insisted upon being placed under Connecticut jurisdiction. The King’s commissioners, who arrived in the country in 1664, charged with the duty of settling all disputes, came into Rhode Island. They received the submission of the Narragansett chiefs to the King, confirmatory of the same act performed in 1644, and they set apart the Narragansett country, extending from the bay to the Pawcatuck River, and named it King’s Province, and established a royal government over it. Some other matters in dispute were happily settled. The royal commissioners were well satisfied with the conduct of Rhode Island.

The colony still grew, but it continued poor. About the year 1663 schools were established in Providence,—a tardy following of Newport, which had employed a teacher in 1640. The colony was kept poor by the great expense incurred in employing agents to defend itself from the surrounding colonies, that wished to crush it. But another trouble arose. A fearful war was impending, the bloodiest which the colony had yet waged with the Indians. We have no space for the story; but Philip’s War fell most heavily on Rhode Island, which furnished troops, but was not consulted as to its management. Peace was at length restored, and the Indians subdued; though they were still turbulent.

Connecticut had not yet renounced her claims on the Narragansett country. Rhode Island set up her authority in the province, and appointed officers for its government. Both colonies appealed to the King. Within the colony itself now arose a most bitter controversy respecting the limits and extent of the original Providence and Pawtuxet purchase, which was not finally settled till the next century. It grew out of the careless manner in which Roger Williams worded the deeds to himself from the Indians, and also those which he himself gave to the colony.

The appeal of Connecticut and Rhode Island to the King resulted in a commission, in 1683, headed by the notorious Cranfield, Governor of New Hampshire, and including the no less notorious Edward Randolph. They quarrelled with the authorities of Rhode Island, and decided in favor of Connecticut.

In due time Rhode Island was a common sufferer with the rest of New England, under the imposition of Andros and his commission. He came into Rhode Island, and was kindly received. He broke the colony seal, but the parchment charter was put beyond his reach. The colony surrendered, and petitioned the King to preserve her charter, and then fell back upon a provisional government of the towns. At the revolution she resumed her charter, and later it was decided in England that it had never been revoked and remained in full force.

[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]

THE Council for New England.—Chalmers, Annals, 1780, p. 99, says concerning the great patent of Nov. 3, 1620, “This patent which has never been printed because so early surrendered, is in the old entries of New England in the Plant. off.” I saw the parchment enrolment of this charter in her Majesty’s Public Record Office, in Fetter Lane, London, and described it in full in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., for April, 1867, p. 54. It was first printed by Hazard, Historical Collections, vol. i. 1792, pp. 103-118, probably from a manuscript copy in the Superior Court files, N. H.[543]

The petition of the Northern Colony for a new charter, dated March 3, 1619/20, and the warrant to his Majesty’s Solicitor-General to prepare such a patent, dated July 23, 1620, may be seen in Brodhead’s Documents, etc., iii. 2-4. The warrant is also in Gorges’ Briefe Narration, p. 21.

The opposition of the Virginia Company to the granting of this patent may be seen in their records as published by Neill., History of the Virginia Company of London, 1869, passim; also in Gorges’ Briefe Narration, pp. 22-31; in the Council’s Briefe Relation,[544] pp. 18-22; and in Brodhead’s Documents, iii. 4. The opposition of the House of Commons to the patent, after it had passed the seals, may be best seen in the printed Journals of the House for the sessions of 1621 and 1624. Chalmers’ extracts are to the point, but are not full. See also Gorges, and the Briefe Relation, as above. For the answer to the French ambassador, see also Sainsbury’s Calendar, Colonial, p. 61. The history of the transactions of the Council may be largely gathered from their extant records as published in Amer. Antiq. Soc. Proc., for April, 1867, and for October, 1875; from Gorges, and from the Briefe Relation. Cf. Palfrey, i. 193.

Probably no complete record exists of all the patents issued by the Council; and of those known to have been granted, the originals, or even copies of all of them, are not known to be extant. As full a list of these as has been collected may be seen in a Lecture read before the Massachusetts Historical Society, Jan. 15, 1869, by Samuel F. Haven, LL. D., entitled History of Grants under the Great Council for New England, etc.,—a valuable paper with comments and explanations, with which compare Dr. Palfrey’s list in his History of New England, i. 397-99.[545] Since Dr. Palfrey wrote, new material has come to light respecting some of these grants. The patent of Aug. 10, 1622, which Dr. Belknap supposed was the Laconia patent, and which he erroneously made the basis of the settlements of Thomson and of the Hiltons, and of later operations on the Piscataqua, is found not to be the Laconia patent, which was issued seven years later, namely, Nov. 17, 1629.[546] Later writers have copied him. Again, Dr. Palfrey refers the early division of the territory by the Council, from the Bay of Fundy to Cape Cod, among twenty associates, to May 31, 1622. By the recovery of another fragment of the records of the Council in 1875, we are able to correct all previous errors respecting that division, which really took place on Sunday, July 29, 1623. This fact has appeared since Dr. Haven wrote.[547]

An object of interest would be the map of the country on which the different patents granted were marked off. Some idea from it might be formed of the geographical mistakes by which one grant overlapped another, or swallowed it up entirely. I know of no published map existing at that time that would have served the purpose. The names of the places on the coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, mentioned by Captain Smith in his tract issued in 1616, were rarely indicated on his map which accompanied the tract. They had been laid down on the manuscript draft of the map, but were changed for English names by Prince Charles.[548] Quite likely the Council had manuscript maps of the coast. Of the division of 1623, the records say it was resolved that the land “be divided according as the division is made in the plot remaining with Dr. Goche.” Smith, speaking of this division, says that the country was at last “engrossed by twenty patentees, that divided my map into twenty parts, and cast lots for their shares,” etc. Smith’s map was probably the best published map of the coast which existed at that time; but the map on which the names were subsequently engrossed and published was Alexander’s map of New England, New France, and New Scotland, published in 1624, in his Encouragement to Colonies, and also issued in the following year in Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1872. This record, as the fac-simile shows,[549] is a mere huddling together of names, with no indication as to a division of the country, as it was not possible there should be on such a map as this, where the whole New England coast, as laid down, is limited to three inches in extent, with few natural features delineated upon it.

The greatest trouble existed among the smaller patents. A large patent, like that to Gorges, for instance, at the grand division, with well-defined natural boundaries on the coast, between the Piscataqua and the Sagadahoc, or the Penobscot, would not be likely to be contested for lack of description; but there had been many smaller patents issued within these limits, which ran into and overlapped each other, and some were so completely annihilated as to cause great confusion.

Some of these smaller patents had alleged powers of government granted to the settlers,—powers probably rarely exercised by virtue of such a grant, and which the Council undoubtedly had no authority to confer.[550] The people of Plymouth, for instance, in their patent of 1630, were authorized, in the language of the grant, to incorporate themselves by some usual or fit name and title, with liberty to make laws and ordinances for their government. They never had a royal charter of incorporation during their separate existence, though they strove hard to obtain one. The Council for New England might from the first have taken the Pilgrims under their own government and protection; and Governor Bradford, in letters to the Council and to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, written in 1627 and 1628, acknowledges that relation, and asks for their aid.[551]

SEAL OF THE COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND.

The records of the Council, so far as they are extant, contain no notice of the adoption of a common seal, and we are ignorant as to the time of its adoption. In the earliest patent known to have been issued by the Council, which was an indenture between them and John Peirce and his associates, dated June 1, 1621, the language is, “In witness whereof the said President and Council have to the one part of this present Indenture set their seals.” This is signed first by the Duke of Lenox, who I think was the first President of the Council, and by five other members of the Council, with the private seal of each appended to his signature. But in a grant to Gorges and Mason, of Aug. 10, 1622, which is also an indenture, the language is, that to one part “the said President and Council have caused their common seal to be affixed.” Here we have a “common seal” used by the Council in issuing their subsequent grants. But it is very singular, that of the many original grants of the Council extant no one of them has the wax impression of the seal intact or unbroken; usually it is wholly wanting. It is believed, however, that the design of the seal has been discovered in the engraving on the titlepage of Smith’s Generall Historie; and the reasons for this opinion may be seen in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., March, 1867, pp. 469-472.[552] A delineation of it is given herewith.

In the absence of any record of the organization of the Council, or of any rules or by-laws for the transaction of its business, we do not know what officers, or what number of the Council, were required for the issuing of patents, or for authorizing the use of the Company’s seal. The only name signed to the Plymouth Patent of Jan. 13, 1629/30 is that of the Earl of Warwick, who was then the President of the Council.

Massachusetts.[553]—The Massachusetts Colony had its origin in a grant of land from the Council of New England, dated March 19, 1627, in old style reckoning.[554] So far as is known, it is the first grant of any moment made after the general division in 1623, but probably it was preceded by the license to the Plymouth people of privileges on the Kennebec. This patent to the Massachusetts Colony is not extant, but it is recited in the subsequent charter. There is some mystery attending the manner of its procurement, as well as about its extent. The business was managed, in the absence of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, by the Earl of Warwick, who was friendly to the patentees.[555] The royal charter of Massachusetts was dated March 4, 1628 (O.S.). For the forms used in issuing it, see Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., December, 1869, pp. 167-196. A discussion of the charter itself as a frame of government for a commonwealth is found in Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts, i. 414, 415; Judge Parker’s Lecture before the Massachusetts Historical Society, Feb. 9, 1869, entitled The First Charter, etc.; and Memorial History of Boston, i. 329-382, and the authorities there cited. As to the right of the Company to transfer the government and charter to the soil, see Judge Parker, as above; Dr. Palfrey, New England, i. 301-308; Barry, History of Massachusetts, i. 174-186, and the authorities cited by them. The original charter, on parchment, is in the State House in Boston. A heliotype of a section of it is given in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 329.[556] The duplicate or exemplification of the charter, which was originally sent over to Endicott in 1629, is now in the Library of the Salem Athenæeum. The charter was first printed, and from the “dupl.” parchment, “by S. Green, for Benj. Harris, at the London Coffee-House, near the Town-House, in Boston, 1689.” It is entitled A Copy of the Massachusetts Charter.[557]

The archives of the State are rich in the materials of its history. The records of the government from its first institution in England down to the overthrow of the charter are almost a history in themselves. The student is no longer required to decipher the ancient writing, for in 1853-54 the Records were copied and printed under the editorial care of Dr. N. B. Shurtleff.[558] A large mass of manuscripts remains at the State House, and is known as the Massachusetts Archives. The papers were classified by the late Joseph B. Felt.[559] They are the constant resource of antiquaries and historians, few of whom, however, but regret the too arbitrary arrangement given to them by that painstaking scholar.[560] The City of Boston, by its Record Commission, is making accessible in print most valuable material which has long slumbered in manuscript. The Archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society are specially rich in early manuscripts, a catalogue of which is now preparing, and its publishing committees are constantly at work converting their manuscripts into print, while the sixty-seven volumes of its publications, as materials of history, are without a rival.[561]

The first general History of Massachusetts Bay was written by Thomas Hutchinson, afterward governor of the province, in two volumes, the first of which, covering the period ending with the downfall of Andros, was published in Boston in 1764. The second volume, bringing the history down to 1750, was published in 1767. Each volume was issued in London in the year following its publication here. The author had rich materials for his work, and was judicious in the use of them. He had a genius for history, and his book will always stand as of the highest authority. A volume of Original Papers, which illustrate the first volume of the history, was published in 1769.[562] Hutchinson died in England in 1780. Among his manuscripts was found a continuation of his history, vol. iii., bringing the events down to 1774, in which year he left the country. This was printed in London in 1828.[563] Some copies of vol. i., London ed., were wrongly dated MDCCLX.

In 1798 was published, in two volumes, a continuation of Hutchinson’s second volume, by George Richards Minot,[564] bringing the history down to 1764. The work was left unfinished, and Alden Bradford, in 1822-1829, published, in three volumes, a continuation of that to the year 1820.

The next most considerable attempt at a general History of Massachusetts was by John Stetson Barry, who published three volumes in 1855-1857. It is a valuable work, written from the best authorities, and comes down to 1820.

Palfrey’s History of New England, the first three volumes of which were published in 1858-1864, and cover the period ending with the downfall of Andros, must be regarded altogether as the best history of this section of our country yet written, as well for its luminous text as for the authorities in its notes.[565]

I will now go back and mention a few other general histories of New England, including those works in which the history of Massachusetts is a prominent feature.

Cotton Mather’s Ecclesiastical History of New England, better known as his Magnalia, from the head-line of the titlepage, Magnalia Christi Americana, was published in London in 1702, in folio. Although relating generally to New England, it principally concerns Massachusetts. While the book is filled with the author’s conceits and puns, and gives abundant evidence of his credulity, it contains a vast amount of valuable historical material, and is indispensable in any New England library. It is badly arranged for consultation, for it is largely a compilation from the author’s previous publications, and it lacks an index. It has been twice reprinted,—in 1820 and 1853.[566]

John Oldmixon, Collector of Customs at Bridgewater, England, compiled and published at London, in 1708, his British Empire in America, in two volumes. About one hundred pages of the first volume relate to New England, and while admitting that he drew on Cotton Mather’s Magnalia for most of his material, omitting the puns, anagrams, etc., the author nevertheless vents his spleen on this book of the Boston divine. Mather was deeply hurt by this indignity, and he devoted the principal part of the Introduction to his Parentator, 1724, to this ill-natured writer. He says he found in eighty-six pages of Oldmixon’s book eighty-seven falsehoods. A second edition of The British Empire in America was published in 1741, with considerable additions and alterations. In the mean time the Rev. Daniel Neal had published in London his History of New England, which led Oldmixon to rewrite, for this new edition, his chapters relating to New England. Oldmixon’s work is of little value. He was careless and unscrupulous.[567]

Mr. Neal’s History of New England, already mentioned, first appeared in 1720, in two volumes, but was republished with additions in 1747.[568] It contains a map “according to the latest observations,” or, as he elsewhere observes, “done from the latest surveys,” in one corner of which is an interesting miniature map of “The Harbour of Boston.” This book must have supplied a great want at the time of its appearance, and though Hutchinson says it is little more than an abridgment of Dr. Mather’s history,—which is not quite true, as see his authorities in the Preface,—it gave in an accessible form many of the principal facts concerning the beginning of New England. It of course relates principally to Plymouth and Massachusetts. Neal was an independent thinker, and differed essentially from Cotton Mather on many subjects.

The Rev. Thomas Prince published in Boston in 1736 A Chronological History of New England in the Form of Annals, in one volume, 12º, of about four hundred pages. The author begins with the creation of the world, and devotes the last two hundred and fifty pages to New England, coming down only to September, 1630, or to the settlement of Boston. After an interval of about twenty years the work was resumed, and three numbers, of thirty-two pages each, of vol. ii. were issued in 1755, bringing the chronology down to August, 1633, when for want of sufficient encouragement the work ceased. Prince was very particular in giving his authorities for every statement, and he professed to quote the very language of his author.[569]

In 1749 was published the first volume of a Summary, Historical and Political, ... of the British Settlements in North America, by William Douglass, M.D. The book had been issued in numbers, beginning in January, 1747. The titlepage of the second volume bears date 1751. The author died suddenly Oct. 21, 1752, before his work was finished. A large part of the book relates to New England. It contains a good deal of valuable information from original sources, but it is put together without system or order, and the whole work appears more like a mass of notes hastily written than like a history. Dr. Douglass was a Scotchman by birth, and coming to Boston while a young man, he attained a reputable standing as a physician. In the small-pox episode in 1721 he took an active part as an opposer of inoculation. He was fond of controversy, was thoroughly honest and fearless, and gave offence in his Summary by his freedom of speech. The Summary was republished in London in 1755 and in 1760, each edition with a large map.[570] The Boston edition was reissued with a new title, dated 1753.

For the origin of the brief settlement at Cape Ann, which drew after it the planting at Salem and the final organization of the Massachusetts Company, and for the narrative of those several events,—namely, the formation in London of the subordinate government for the colony, “London’s Plantation in Massachusetts Bay,” with Endicott as its first governor, and his instructions; the emigration under Higginson in 1629; the establishment of the church in Salem, and the difficulty with the Browns; and the emigration under Winthrop in 1630,—see John White’s Planter’s Plea,[571] Hubbard’s New England, chap. xviii.; the Colony Records; Morton’s Memorial, under the year 1629; Higginson’s Journal, and his New England Plantation;[572] Dudley’s Letter to the Countess of Lincoln;[573] and Winthrop’s own Journal. For the principal part of these documents and others of great value the reader is referred to Dr. Alexander Young’s Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay,—a convenient manual for reference, of the highest authority, containing ample bibliographical notes and illustrations, which need not be repeated here. This book, which was published in 1846, was unfortunately thrown into chapters as of one narrative, as had been that relating to the Plymouth Colony, published in 1841, whereby the original authorities, which should be the prominent feature of the book, are subordinated to an editorial plan.

For the original authorities of the history of the scattered settlements in Massachusetts Bay, prior to the Winthrop emigration, I cannot do better than refer to a paper on the “Old Planters,” so called, about Boston Harbor, by Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., June, 1878, p. 194; and to Mr. Adams’s chapter in Memorial History of Boston, i. 63.

SHIP OF XVII^TH CENTURY.

[This fac-simile is from a map in Dudley’s Arcano del Mare, 1647.—Ed.]

In Captain John Smith’s Advertisements for the unexperienced Planters of New England, or anywhere, London, 1631, he has two chapters (xi. and xii.) on the settlement of Salem and Charlton (Charlestown), and an account of the sad condition of the colony for months after the Winthrop emigration. This is Smith’s last book, and his best in a literary point of view, and was published the year of his death.[574]

The New England’s Prospect, by William Wood, London, 1634, is the earliest topographical account of the Massachusetts Colony, so far as the settlements then extended. It also has a full description of its fauna and flora, and of the natives. It is a valuable book, and is written in vigorous and idiomatic English. The writer lived here four years, returning to England Aug. 15, 1633. His book is entered in the Stationers’ Register, “7 Julii, 1634.” Alonzo Lewis, author of the History of Lynn, thinks that he came over again to the colony in 1635, as a person of that name arrived that year in the “Hopewell.”[575]

The New English Canaan, by Thomas Morton, Amsterdam, 1637, “written upon ten years’ knowledge and experiment of the country,” is a sort of satire upon the Plymouth and Massachusetts people, who looked upon the author as a reprobate and an outlaw. He came over, probably, with Weston’s company in 1622, and on the breaking up of that settlement may have gone back to England. In 1625 he is found here again with Captain Wollaston’s company on a plantation at “Mount Wollaston,” where he had his revels. He was twice banished the country, and before his final return hither wrote this book. His description of the natural features of the country, and his account of the native inhabitants are of considerable interest and value, and the side-light which he throws upon the Pilgrim and Puritan colonies will serve at least to amuse the reader.[576] Morton’s book, though printed in Holland “in the yeare 1637,” was entered in the Stationers’ Register in London, “Nov. 18, 1633,” in the name of Charles Greene as publisher; and a copy of the book is now (1882) in the library of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 19 Delahay Street, Westminster, London, bearing this imprint: “Printed for Charles Greene, and are sold in Paul’s Church-Yard;” no date, but “1632” written in with a pen. See White Kennett’s Bibliothecæ Americanæ Primordia, p. 77, where this copy is entered, and where the manuscript date is printed in the margin. This date is, of course, an error.[577] Morton’s book was not written till after the publication of Wood’s New England’s Prospect, to which reference is frequently made in the New English Canaan. The New England’s Prospect was entered at the Stationers’, “7 Julii, 1634,” and was published the same year. Morton’s book is dedicated to the Commissioners for Foreign Plantations,—a body not created till April 28, 1634. The book must have been entered at the Stationers’ some time in anticipation of its printing; and when printed, some copies were struck off bearing the imprint of Charles Greene, though only one copy is now known with his name on the titlepage.

AUTOGRAPHS OF LEADERS IN THE WAR.

The first serious trouble with the Indians, which had been brewing for some years, culminated in 1637, when the Pequots were annihilated. This produced a number of narrations, two of which were published at the time, and in London,—one by Philip Vincent,[578] in 1637, and one by Captain John Underhill, in 1638.[579] The former is not known to have been in New England at the time, but the minute particulars of his narrative would lead one to suppose that he had been in close communication with some persons who had been in the conflict. He could hardly have been present himself. Captain John Underhill, the writer of the second tract, was commander of the Massachusetts forces at the storming of the fort, so that he narrates much of what he saw. He prefaces his account with a description of the country, and of the origin of the troubles with the Pequots. Both these narratives are reprinted in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., vi.

I may add here that there were other narratives of the Pequot War written by actors in it. A narrative by Major John Mason, the commander of the Connecticut forces, was left by him on his death, in manuscript, and was communicated by his grandson to the Rev. Thomas Prince, who published it in 1736. It is the best account of the affair written. Some two or three years after the death of Mason, Mr. Allyn, the Secretary of the colony of Connecticut, sent a narrative of the Pequot War to Increase Mather, who published it in his Relation of the Troubles, etc., 1677, as of Allyn’s composition. Having no preface or titlepage, Mather did not know that it was written by Major Mason, as was afterward fully explained by Prince, who had the entire manuscript from Mason’s grandson.[580]

Lyon Gardiner, commander of the Saybrook fort during the Pequot War, also wrote an account of the action, prefacing it with a narrative of recollections of earlier events. It was written in his old age. It was first printed in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 136-160.[581]

For the history of the Antinomian controversy which broke out about this time and convulsed the whole of New England, see the examination of Mrs. Hutchinson in Hutchinson’s Massachusetts Bay, ii. 482; Welde’s Short Story, etc., London, 1644; Chandler’s Criminal Trials, Boston, 1841, vol. i.[582]

A small quarto volume published in London in 1641, entitled An Abstract of the Lawes of New England as they are now Established, was one of the results of an attempt to form a body of standing laws for the colony. I may premise, that, at the first meeting of the Court of Assistants at Charlestown, certain rules of proceeding in civil actions were established, and powers for punishing offenders instituted. In the former case equity according to circumstances was the rule; and in punishing offences they professed to be governed by the judicial laws of Moses where such laws were of a moral nature.[583] But such proceedings were arbitrary and uncertain, and the body of the people were clamorous for a code of standing laws. John Cotton had been requested to assist in framing such a code, and in October, 1636, he handed in to the General Court a copy of a body of laws that he had compiled “in an exact method,” called “Moses his Judicials,” which the Court took into consideration till the next meeting. The subject occupied attention from year to year, till in December, 1641, the General Court established a body of one hundred laws, called the Body of Liberties, which had been composed by the Rev. Nathaniel Ward,[584] of Ipswich. No copy of these laws was known to have been preserved on the records of the colony; and of the earliest printed digest of the laws, in 1648, which no doubt substantially conformed to the Body of Liberties, no copy is extant.

The Abstract above recited, published in 1641, was therefore for many years regarded as the Body of Liberties, or an abstract of them, passed in that year. About forty years ago Francis C. Gray, Esq., noticed in the library of the Boston Athenæum a manuscript code of laws entitled “A Copy of the Liberties of the Massachusetts Colonie in New England,” which he caused to be printed in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., viii. 216-237, with a learned introduction, in which he showed conclusively that this body of laws was the code of 1641, and that the Abstract printed that year in London was John Cotton’s code, Moses his Judicials, which the General Court never adopted. A copy having found its way to England, it was sent to the press under a misapprehension, and an erroneous titlepage prefixed to it. Indeed, that John Cotton was the author of the code published in London in 1641 had been evident from an early period, by means of a second and enlarged edition published in London by William Aspinwall in 1655, from a manuscript copy left by the author. Aspinwall, then in England, in a long address to the reader, says that Cotton collected out of the Scriptures, and digested this Abstract, and commended it to the Court of Massachusetts, “which had they then had the heart to have received, it might have been better both with them there and us here than now it is.” The Abstract of 1641, with Aspinwall’s preface to the edition of 1655, was reprinted in 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., v. 173-192. Hutchinson, Papers, 1769, pp. 161-179, had already printed the former.[585]

The religious character of the colony was exemplified by the publication, in 1640, of the first book issued from the Cambridge press, set up by Stephen Daye the year before; namely, The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, by Richard Mather, Thomas Welde, and John Eliot. Prince, in the preface to his revised edition of this book, 1758, says that it “had the honor of being the First Book printed in North America, and, as far as I can find, in this whole New World.” Prince was not aware that a printing press had existed in the City of Mexico one hundred years before.[586] He was right, however, in the first part of his sentence. Eight copies of the book are known to be extant, of which two are in Cambridge, where it was printed. Within a year or two a copy has been sold for fifteen hundred dollars.[587] The first thing printed by Daye was the freeman’s oath, the next was an almanac made for New England by Mr. William Peirce, mariner,—so says Winthrop. What enterprising explorer of garrets and cellars will add copies of these to our collections of Americana? Probably one of the last books printed by Daye was the first digest of the laws of the colony, which was passing through the press in 1648. Johnson says it was printed that year. Probably 1649 was the date on the titlepage. Not a single copy is known to be in existence. Daye was succeeded in 1649 by Samuel Green, who issued books from the Cambridge press for nearly fifty years.[588]

One of the most interesting and authentic of the early narratives relating to the colony is Thomas Lechford’s Plain Dealing, London, 1642. Lechford came over here in 1638, arriving June 27, and he embarked for home Aug. 3, 1641. He was a lawyer by profession, and he came here with friendly feelings toward the Puritan settlement. But lawyers were not wanted in the colony. He was looked upon with suspicion, and could barely earn a living for his family. He did some writing for the magistrates, and transcribed some papers for Nathaniel Ward, the supposed author of the Body of Liberties, to whom he may have rendered professional aid in that work. He prepared his book for the press soon after his return home. It is full of valuable information relating to the manners and customs of the colony, written by an able and impartial hand.[589]

To the leading men in the colony, religion, or their own notion concerning religion, was the one absorbing theme; and they sought to embody it in a union of Church and State. In this regard John Cotton[590] seems to have been the mouthpiece of the community. He came near losing his influence at the time of the Antinomian controversy but by judicious management he recovered himself. He was not averse to discussion, had a passion for writing, and his pen was ever active. The present writer has nearly thirty of Cotton’s books,—the Carter-Brown Catalogue shows over forty,—written in New England, and sent to London to be printed. Some of these were in answer to inquiries from London concerning their church estate, etc., here, and were intended to satisfy the curiosity of friends, as well as to influence public opinion there. Cotton had a long controversy with Roger Williams relating to the subject of Williams’s banishment from this colony. Another discussion with him, which took a little different form, was the “Bloudy Tenet” controversy, which had another origin, and in which the question of persecution for conscience’ sake was discussed. Williams, of course, here had the argument on the general principle. Cotton was like a strong man struggling in the mire.[591] Cotton’s book on the Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven shows his idea of the true church polity. His answer to Baylie’s Dissuasive in The Way of the Congregational Churches Cleared is really a valuable historical book, in which, incidentally, he introduces information concerning persons and events which relate to Plymouth as well as to Massachusetts. This book furnished to the present writer the clew to the fact that John Winthrop was the author of the principal part of the contents of Welde’s Short Story, published in London in 1644, relating to the Antinomian troubles and Mrs. Hutchinson. The Rev. Thomas Hooker, of Hartford, entered with Cotton into the church controversy. His Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, etc., written in answer to Rutherford, Hudson, and Baylie, Presbyterian controversialists, was published within the same cover with Cotton’s book last cited, and one general titlepage covered both, with the imprint of London, 1648.

Well known among Cotton’s other productions is his Milk for Babes, drawn out of the Breasts of both Testaments, chiefly for the Spiritual Nourishment of Boston Babes in either England, but may be of like Use for any Children, London, 1646.[592]

The discussion of Cotton and others having confirmed the colony in its church polity,—“From New England,” says Baylie, writing in London in 1645, “came Independency of Churches hither, which hath spread over all parts here,”—it was thought best to embody the system in a platform. So a synod was called for May, 1646, which by sundry meetings and adjournments completed the work in August, 1648. The result was the famous “Cambridge Platform,” which continued the rule of our ecclesiastical polity, with slight variations, till the adoption of the constitution of 1780. It was printed at Cambridge, in 1649, by Samuel Green,—probably his first book,—and was entitled A Platform of Church Discipline, etc. A copy of the printed volume was sent over to London by John Cotton (who probably had the largest agency in preparing the work)[593] to Edward Winslow, then in England, who procured it to be printed in 1653, with an explanatory preface by himself.[594]

The important political union of the New England colonies, or a portion of them, in 1643, has been already referred to. The Articles of Confederation were first printed in 1656 in London, prefixed to Governor Eaton’s code of laws entitled New Haven’s Settling in New England,[595] to be mentioned further on.

The trouble of Massachusetts with Samuel Gorton was brought about by the unwarrantable conduct of the colony towards that eccentric person. Gorton appealed to England, and Edward Winslow, the diplomatist of Plymouth and Massachusetts, was sent over to defend the Bay colony. Gorton’s Simplicitie’s Defence, published in London in 1646, was answered by Winslow’s Hypocrasie Unmasked, issued the same year. This was reissued in 1649, with a new titlepage, called The Danger of tolerating Levellers in a Civill State, the Dedication to the Earl of Warwick, in the former issue, being omitted.[596]

Winslow had his hands full, about this time, in defending Massachusetts. The colony was never without a disturbing element in its own population, and about the time of the trouble with Gorton a number of influential persons who held Presbyterian views of church government were clamorous for the right of suffrage, which was denied them. The controversy of the Government with Dr. Robert Child, Samuel Maverick, and others, in 1646, need not be repeated here. An appeal was made to England. Child and some of his associates went thither, and published a book in 1647, in London, called New England’s Jonas cast up at London, edited by Child’s brother, Major John Child, whose name appears upon the titlepage. A postscript comments unfavorably on Winslow’s Hypocrasie Unmasked. This book was replied to by Winslow in a tract called New England’s Salamander Discovered, etc., London, 1647. These books are important as illustrating Massachusetts history at this period.[597]

SHEPARD’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.

[A fac-simile of the opening of the little book, which contains Thomas Shepard’s autobiography, now the property of the Shepard Memorial Church in Cambridge.—Ed.]

During this visit of Winslow to England, from which he never returned to New England, he performed a grateful service in behalf of the natives. By his influence a corporation was created by Parliament, in 1649, for propagating the gospel among the Indian tribes in New England, and some of the accounts of the progress of the missions, sent over from the colony, were published in London by the corporation. The conversion of the natives was one object set forth in the Massachusetts charter; and Roger Williams had, while a resident of Massachusetts and Plymouth, taken a deep interest in them, and in 1643, while on a voyage to England, he drew up A Key unto the Language of America,[598] published that year in London. In that same year there was also published in London a small tract called New England’s First-Fruits, first in respect to the college, and second in respect to the Indians.[599] Some hopeful instances of conversion among the natives were briefly given in this tract. In 1647 a more full relation of Eliot’s labors was sent over to Winslow, who the year before had arrived in England as agent of Massachusetts, and printed under the title, The Day breaking, if not the Sun rising, of the Gospel with the Indians in New England. In the following year, 1648, a narrative was published in London, written by Thomas Shepard, called The Clear Sunshine of the Gospel breaking forth upon the Indians, etc., and this in 1649 was followed by The Glorious Progress of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England, setting forth the labors of Eliot and Mayhew. The Rev. Henry Whitfield, who had been pastor of a church in Guilford, Conn., returned to England in 1650; and in the following year he published in London The Light appearing more and more towards the Perfect Day, and in 1652, Strength out of Weakness, both containing accounts, written chiefly by Eliot, of the progress of his labors. This last tract was the first of those published by the Corporation, which continued thenceforth, for several years, to publish the record of the missions as they were sent over from the colony. In 1653 a tract appeared under the title of Tears of Repentance, etc.; in 1655, A late and further Manifestation of the Progress of the Gospel, etc.; in 1659, A further Accompt, etc.; and in 1660, A further Account still.[600] Eliot’s literary labors in behalf of the Massachusetts Indians culminated in the translation of the Bible into their dialect, and its publication through the Cambridge press. The Testament was printed in 1661, and the whole Bible in 1663; and second editions of each appeared,—the former in 1680, and the latter in 1685.[601]

Eliot was imbued with the enthusiasm of the time. As John Cotton had deduced a body of laws from the Scriptures, which he offered to the General Court for the colony, so in like manner Eliot drew from the Scriptures a frame of government for a commonwealth. It was entitled The Christian Commonwealth; or, the Civil Polity of the Rising Kingdom of Jesus Christ, which he sent to England during the interregnum, and commended to the people there. He had drawn up a similar form for his Indian community, and had put it in practice. His manuscript, after slumbering for some years, was printed in London in 1659, and some copies came over to the colony. The Restoration soon followed. Eliot had in his treatise reflected on kingly government, and in May, 1661, the General Court ordered the book to be totally suppressed; and all persons having copies of it were commanded either to cancel or deface the same, or deliver them to the next magistrate. Eliot acknowledged his fault under his own hand, saying he sent the manuscript to England some nine or ten years before. Hutchinson, commenting on this whole proceeding, says, “When the times change, men generally suffer their opinions to change with them, so far at least as is necessary to avoid danger.” How many copies of the book were destroyed by this order of the court, we cannot tell. A few years ago the only copy known was owned by Colonel Thomas Aspinwall, then residing in London; and from this copy a transcript was made, and it was printed in 1846 in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., ix. 129.[602]

Eliot was not the only distinguished citizen whose book came under the ban of the Massachusetts authorities. William Pynchon, of Springfield, wrote a book which was published in London in 1650, entitled The Meritorious price of our Redemption, etc., copies of which arrived in Boston during the session of the General Court in October of that year. The Court immediately condemned it, and ordered it to be burned the next day in the market-place, which was done; and Mr. Norton was asked to answer it. Norton obeyed, and the book he wrote was ordered to be sent to London to be published. It was A Discussion of that Great Point in Divinity, the Sufferings of Christ, etc., 1653. Pynchon in the mean time was brought before the Court, and was plied by several orthodox divines. He admitted that some points in his book were overstated, and his sentence was postponed. Not liking his treatment here he went back to England in 1652, and published a reply to Norton in a work with a title similar to that which gave the original offence, London, 1655. Pynchon held that Christ did not suffer the torments of hell for mankind, and that he bore not our sins by imputation. A more full answer to Norton’s book was published by him in 1662, called the Covenant of Nature.[603]

John Winthrop died March 26, 1649. No man in the colony was so well qualified as he, either from opportunity or character, to write its history. Yet he left no history. But he left what was more precious,—a journal of events, recorded in chronological order, from the time of his departure from England in the “Arbella,” to within two months of his death. This Journal may be called the materials of history of the most valuable character. The author himself calls it a “History of New England.” From this, for the period which it covers, and from the records of the General Court for the same period, a history of the colony for the first twenty years could be written. For over one hundred years from Winthrop’s death no mention is made of his Journal. Although it was largely drawn upon by Hubbard in his History (1680), and was used by Cotton Mather in his Magnalia, it was cited by neither, and was first mentioned by Thomas Prince on the cover of the first number of the second volume of his Annals, in 1755. Among his list of authorities there given, he mentions “having lately received” this Journal of Governor Winthrop. Prince made but little use of this manuscript, as the three numbers only which he issued of his second volume ended with Aug. 5, 1633. Prince probably procured the Journal from the Winthrop family in Connecticut. It was in three volumes. The first and second volumes were restored to the family, and were published in Hartford in 1790, in one volume, edited by Noah Webster.[604] The third volume was found in the Prince Library, in the tower of the Old South Church, in 1816, and was given to the Massachusetts Historical Society. It was published, together with volumes one and two, in 1825 and 1826, in two volumes, edited by James Savage.[605] Volume two of the manuscript was destroyed by a fire which, Nov. 10, 1825, consumed the building in Court Street, Boston, in which Mr. Savage had his office.[606]

The earliest published narrative—we can hardly call it a history—relating generally to Massachusetts, is Edward Johnson’s “Wonder-Working Providence of Sion’s Saviour in New England,”—the running title to the book, which on the titlepage is called a History of New England, etc., London, 1654. The book does not profess to give an orderly account of the settlement of New England, or even of Massachusetts, to which it wholly relates, but describes what took place in the colony under his own observation largely, and what would illustrate “the goodness of God in the settlement of these colonies.” The book is supposed to have been written two or three years only before it was sent to England to be published. It is conjectured that the titlepage was added by the publisher.[607] The book has a value, for it contains many facts, but its composition and arrangement are bad.[608]

The Quaker episode produced an abundant literature. Several Rhode Island Baptists had previously received rough usage here; and Dr. John Clarke, one of the founders of Rhode Island, who had a personal experience to relate, published in London, in 1652,—whither he had gone with Roger Williams the year before,—a book against the colony, called Ill-Newes from New-England, or a Narrative of New-England’s Persecution, etc.[609]

In 1654, two years before the Quakers made their appearance, the colony passed a law against any one having in his possession the books of Reeve and Muggleton, “the two Last Witnesses and True Prophets of Jesus Christ,” as they called themselves. Some of the books of these fanatics had been printed in London in 1653, and had made their way to the colony, and the executioner was ordered to burn all such books in the market-place on the next Lecture day. In 1656 the Quakers came and brought their books, which were at once seized and reserved for the fire; while sentence of banishment was passed against those who brought them. The Quakers continued to flock to the colony in violation of the law now passed against them. They were imprisoned, whipped, and two were hanged in Boston in October, 1659, one in June, 1660, and one in March, 1661. Some of the more important books which the Quaker controversy brought forth must now be named. An account of the reception which the Quakers met with here soon found its way to London, and to the hands of Francis Howgill, who published it with the title, The Popish Inquisition Newly Erected in New England, etc., London, 1659. Another tract appeared there the same year as The Secret Works of a Cruel People Made Manifest. In the following year appeared A Call from Death to Life, letters written “from the common goal of Boston” by Stephenson and Robinson (who were shortly after executed); and one “written in Plymouth Prison” by Peter Pearson, a few weeks later, giving an account of the execution of the two former. In October, 1658, John Norton had been appointed by the Court to write a treatise on the doctrines of the Quakers, which he did, and the tract was printed in Cambridge in 1659, and in London in 1660, with the title, The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies of the Present Generation. After three Quakers had been hanged, the colony, under date of Dec. 19, 1660, sent an “Humble Petition and Address of the General Court ... unto the High and Mighty Prince Charles the Second,” defending their conduct. This was presented February 11, and printed, and was replied to by Edward Burroughs in an elaborate volume, which contains a full account of the first three martyrs. This was followed this year, 1661, by a yet more important volume, by George Bishope, called New England Judged, in which the story of the Quaker persecution from the beginning is told. Bishope lived in England, and published in a first volume the accounts and letters of the sufferers sent over to him. A second volume was published in 1667, continuing the narrative of the sufferings and of the hanging of William Leddra, in March, 1661. A general History of the Quakers was written by William Sewel, a Dutch Quaker of Amsterdam, published there in his native tongue, in 1717, folio. Sewel’s grandfather was an English Brownist, who emigrated to Holland. The book was translated by the author himself into English, and published in London in 1722.[610] Joseph Besse’s book,—A Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers, for the Testimony of a Good Conscience, 1753,—contains a mass of most valuable statistics about the Quakers. Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay has an excellent summarized account, as do the histories of Dr. Palfrey and Mr. Barry.[611]

The records of the colony, as I have frequently had occasion to observe, afford the richest materials for the colony’s history, and never more so than in regard to the trials which the colony experienced from the period following the Restoration to the time of Dudley and Andros. The story of the visit of the royal commissioners here in 1665 is no where so fully told as there. Indeed, the principal source of the history of Maine and of New Hampshire while they were for many years a component part of the colony of Massachusetts is told in the records of the old Bay State.

During the trouble with the Quakers Massachusetts was afflicted by a wordy controversy, imported from Connecticut, but which did not reach its culminating point till 1662. I refer to the “Half-way Covenant,” for the discussion of which a council of ministers from both colonies was called in 1657, in Boston, which pronounced in favor of the system in question. A synod of Massachusetts churches in 1662 confirmed the judgment here given, and the Half-way Covenant system prevailed extensively in New England for more than a century. After the synod was dissolved, and the result was published by order of the General Court, the discussion continued, and several tracts were issued from the Cambridge press, pro and con, in 1662, 1663, and 1664.[612] Of Morton’s New England’s Memorial mention has already been made in the preceding chapter, as it concerns chiefly the Plymouth Colony. It contains, however, many things of interest about Massachusetts; recording the death of many of her worthies, and embalming their memories in verse. It ends with the year 1668, with a notice of the death of Jonathan Mitchel, the minister of Cambridge, and of that of John Eliot, Jr., the son of the apostle, at the age of thirty-two years. There are five unpaged leaves after “finis,” containing “A Brief Chronological Table.”

There was printed in London in 1674 An Account of Two Voyages to New England, by John Josselyn, Gent., a duodecimo volume of 279 pages. This author and traveller was a brother of Henry Josselyn, of Black Point, or Scarborough, in Maine, and they are said to have been sons of Sir Thomas Josselyn, of Kent, knight. John came to New England in 1638, and landed at Noddle’s Island, and was a guest of Samuel Maverick; thence he went to Scarborough, stayed with his brother till the end of 1639, and then returned home. In 1663 he came over again, and stayed till 1671; and then went home and wrote this book. His own observations are valuable, but his history is often erroneous. He frequently cites Johnson. At the end of his book is a chronological table running back before the Christian era. His New England’s Rarities, published in 1672, giving an account of the fauna and flora of the country, has been reprinted with notes in the American Antiquarian Society’s Transactions, vol. iv., edited by Edward Tuckerman.[613]

The interest of John Ogilby’s large folio on America is almost solely a borrowed one, so far as concerns New England history, arising from the use he made of Wood, Johnson, and Gorges.[614]

The modern student will find a very interesting series of successive bulletins, as it were, of the sensations engendered by the progress of the Indian outbreak of 1675-76, known as “Philip’s War,” and of the events as they occurred, in a number of tracts, mostly of few pages, which one or more persons in Boston sent to London to be printed. They are now among the choicest rarities of a New England library.[615] It was to make an answer to one of these tracts that Increase Mather hastily put together and printed in Boston,[616] in 1676, his Brief History of the War, which was reprinted in London in the same year.[617] The year after (1677) the war closed,[618] Foster, the new Boston printer, also printed William Hubbard’s Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians, which likewise came from the London press the same year with a changed title, The Present State of New England, being a Narrative, etc.,—a book not, however, confined to Philip’s War, but going back, as the Boston title better showed, over the whole series of the conflicts with the natives.[619]

In the year 1679 it became known to the members of the General Court that the Rev. William Hubbard, of Ipswich, had compiled a History of New England, and in June of that year they ordered that the Governor and four other persons be a committee “to peruse the same,” and make return of their opinion thereof by the next session, in order “that the Court may then, as they shall then judge meet, take order for the impression thereof.” Two years afterward, in October, the Court thankfully acknowledged the services of Mr. Hubbard in compiling his History, and voted him fifty pounds in money, “he transcribing it fairly into a book that it may be the more easily perused.” There was no further movement made for the printing of the volume. The transcript made agreeably to this order is now in the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The preface and some leaves of the text are wanting. This was by far the most important history of New England which had then been written. The compiler had the benefit of Bradford’s History and Winthrop’s Journal, though, after the fashion of the time, he makes no mention of them, only acknowledging in a general way his indebtedness to “the original manuscripts of such as had the managing of those affairs under their hands.” The manuscript was first printed in 1815 by the Massachusetts Historical Society; and a second edition, “collated with the original MS.,” was printed in 1848.[620]

The history of the struggles of the colony to maintain its charter during the period immediately preceding the loss of it is largely told in the pages of its records, and in a large mass of documents published in Hutchinson’s volume of Papers, and cited in Chalmers’ Annals and in Palfrey’s New England. Reference may also be made to a paper by the present writer in vol. i. of Memorial History of Boston, on this struggle to maintain the charter.

The history of the Dudley and Andros administrations may be gathered from numerous publications which came from the press just after the Revolution; and, without mentioning their titles, I cannot do better than refer to them as published in three volumes by the Prince Society of Boston, called the Andros Tracts, edited with abundant notes by William H. Whitmore.[621] Palfrey’s History should be read in connection with these memorials. The original papers of the “Inter-charter Period” are largely wanting, though some volumes of the Massachusetts Archives are so entitled.[622]

As materials for the history of the State it should be remembered that there are many town histories which contain matter of more than mere local interest. The history of the town of Boston is in a great degree the history of the colony and State, and the several histories of that town, notably those by Caleb H. Snow (to 1825) and Samuel G. Drake (to 1770), and the Description of N. B. Shurtleff,[623] may be specially mentioned; while the recently published Memorial History of Boston, edited by Mr. Justin Winsor, is indispensable to any student who wishes to know a large part of the story of Massachusetts.[624] The History of Salem, by Dr. J. B. Felt, gives many documents of the first importance relating to the settlement of that ancient town, where the colony had its birth; and the same writer’s Customs of New England, Boston, 1853, has a distinctive value.

The Bibliography of the Local History of Massachusetts, by Jeremiah Colburn, Boston, 1871, a volume of 119 pages, deserves a place in every New England library,[625] and it may be supplemented by the brief titles included in Mr. F. B. Perkins’s Check List of American History.[626] There is a good list of local histories in the Brinley Catalogue, no. 1,558, etc. The Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts, by the late Emory Washburn, is a most important book for that phase of the subject.

Maine.[627]—The documentary history of Maine properly begins with the grant to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The previous operations under the Laconia Company were partly, as we have seen, on the territory of Maine, while in part also their history is preserved in the archives of New Hampshire.[628]

The patent issued to Gorges at the general division, in 1635, of the territory which he named “New Somersetshire,” is not extant. An organization, as we have already said, took place under this grant, and a few records are extant in manuscript.[629]

The royal charter of Maine, dated April 3, 1639, was transcribed into a book of records of the Court of Common Pleas and Sessions for the county of York, and, with the commissions to the officers, has been printed by Sullivan in his History of Maine, Boston, 1795, Appendix No. 1.

The first government organized under the charter[630] was in 1640, and the manuscript records are also at Alfred with the commissions to the officers. Extracts from the records were made by Folsom, as above, pp. 53-57. After the submission of Maine to Massachusetts in 1653, courts were held at York under the authority of the latter. Afterward, when the royal commissioners came over and went into Maine, a portion of the inhabitants were encouraged to rebel against the authority of Massachusetts, and courts were temporarily set up under a commission from Sir Robert Carr. Some records of their doings exist.[631]

AUTOGRAPHS.

[Mason was the proprietor of New Hampshire. Mr. C. W. Tuttle was engaged at his death on a memoir of Mason, upon whom he delivered addresses, reported in the Boston Advertiser, June 22, 1871, and Boston Globe, April 4, 1872. Garde was the mayor of Gorgeana. Thomas Gorges was the deputy-governor of Maine.—Ed.]

The Records of Massachusetts for the years 1652-53 show the official relations which existed between the two colonies. The State-paper offices of England contain a large quantity of manuscripts illustrating the claims of Ferdinando Gorges, the grandson of the original proprietor; and the principal part of these may be seen either in abstracts, or at full length in Folsom’s Catalogue of Original Documents[632] relating to Maine (New York, 1858), prepared by the late H. G. Somerby.[633] Many of these papers may also be found in Chalmers’ Annals, 1780, who had great facilities for consulting the public offices in England.[634]

Of general histories of Maine, the earliest was that of James Sullivan, entitled The History of the District of Maine, Boston, 1795, the territory having been made a Federal district in 1779. Judge Sullivan was too busy a man to write so complicated a history as that of Maine; and he fell into some errors, and came short of what would be expected of a writer at the present day. He was one of the founders and at that time president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and doubtless felt the obligation to do some such work. The next important History of Maine is that of Judge William D. Williamson, published at Hallowell, 1832, in two volumes. This contains a vast amount of material indispensable to the student; but there are serious errors in the work, made known by the discovery of new matter since its publication. In 1830 there was published at Saco, Maine, a small 12º volume, by George Folsom,[635] called History of Saco and Biddeford, with Notices of other Early Settlements, etc. Although a history of two comparatively small towns, now cities, yet they were early settlements; and the author, who had a faculty for history, made his work the occasion of writing a brief but authentic sketch of the history of Maine under all her multiform governments and varying fortunes. It was the best town history then written in New England, as it was also the best history of the Province of Maine..

I might mention a volume of Sketches of the Ecclesiastical History of Maine from the Earliest Period, by the Rev. Jonathan Greenleaf of Wells, published at Portsmouth, 1821.

In 1831-33 William Willis published his History of Portland, in two parts. The work embraced also sketches of several other towns, and it was prefaced by an account of the early patents and settlements in Maine; while the second edition, issued in 1865, is yet more full on the general history of the province.

There are other valuable town histories, and I cannot do better than refer the reader to Mr. William Willis’s “Descriptive Catalogue of Books relating to Maine,” in Norton’s Literary Letter, No. 4, for 1859, and as enlarged in Historical Magazine, March, 1870.[636]

The Collections of the Maine Historical Society,[637] in eight volumes, contain a large amount of material which illustrates this early period. The first volume was issued in 1831, and in fact forms the first part of Willis’s History of Portland. The Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and especially vol. vii. of the fourth series, should be cited as of special interest here.

The Relation of the Council for New England, the narratives in Purchas, Winthrop’s Journal, Hubbard’s Indian Wars, and that author’s History of New England and the Two Voyages of Josselyn, have already been referred to, and they should be again noted in this place, as should Dr. Palfrey’s History of New England especially. Gorges’ Briefe Narration, 1658, is most valuable as coming from the original proprietor himself. Its value is seriously impaired by its want of chronological order and of dates, and by its errors in date. In what condition the manuscript was left by its author, and to what extent the blemishes of the work are attributable to the editor or the printer, can never be known. Sir Ferdinando died in May, 1647. The work was written not long before his death, and was published some twelve years afterward, with two compilations by his grandson and the sheets of Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence.[638] Notwithstanding its blemishes, the tract has great value; but it should be read in connection with other works which furnish unquestionable historical data.

The Memorial Volume of the Popham Celebration, Aug. 20, 1862 (Portland, 1862), contains a good deal of historical material; but a large part of it was, unfortunately, prepared under a strong theological and partisan bias. In its connection with the settlement at Sabino, it has been mentioned in an earlier chapter.

A valuable historical address was delivered at the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, Nov. 4, 1876, by Joshua L. Chamberlain, President of Bowdoin College, entitled Maine, Her Place in History, and was published in Augusta in 1877.

New Hampshire.—New Hampshire was probably first settled by David Thomson, in the spring of 1623. The original sources of information concerning him are the Records of the Council for New England; a contemporaneous indenture, 1622, recently found among the Winthrop Papers, and since published; Winslow’s Good News, London, 1624, p. 50; Bradford’s Plymouth Plantation, p. 154; Hubbard’s New England, pp. 89, 105, 214, 215; Levett’s Voyage[639] to New England in 1623/24; Pratt’s Narrative, in 4 Mass. Hist. Coll., iv. 486, and Gorges’ Briefe Narration, p. 37. All these authorities are summarized by the present writer in a note, on page 362 of Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., May, 1876, to a paper on “David Thomson and the Settlement of New Hampshire.”

For the settlement of the Hiltons on Dover Neck, and for the later history of the town, see Records of the Council; Hubbard; a Paper on David Thomson in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., as above; 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., iii. 63; Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, i. 118, and the authorities (A. H. Quint and others) there cited; cf. Mr. Hassam’s paper in N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., January, 1882, p. 40; Winthrop’s Journal, i. 276.

For the doings of the Laconia Company, and the settlement of Portsmouth, see Belknap’s New Hampshire, who errs respecting the Laconia patent and the date of the operations of the Company; Hubbard as above; Provincial Papers, where the extant Laconia documents are printed at length; Jenness’s Isles of Shoals, 2d ed., New York, 1875, and his privately printed (1878) Notes on the First Planting of New Hampshire; the paper on David Thomson, as above; Adams’s Annals of Portsmouth; N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., ii. 37.

For the history of the settlements of Exeter and Hampton see Belknap, as above; and cf. Farmer’s edition, who holds to the forgery of the Wheelwright deed of 1629; Provincial Papers as above, pp. 128-153. For a discussion of the genuineness of the Wheelwright deed, it will be sufficient, perhaps, to refer to Mr. Savage’s argument against it in Winthrop’s Journal, i. Appendix, which the present writer thinks unanswerable, and Governor C. H. Bell’s able defence of it in the volume of the Prince Society on John Wheelwright.[640]

Concerning the several patents issued by the Council to cover the territory of New Hampshire, or parts of it, which afterward appeared in history, one was made to John Mason, of Nov. 7, 1629, of territory between the Merrimac and Piscataqua, which, “with consent of the Council, he intends to name New Hampshire” (Mason was governor of Portsmouth co. Hants). This grant[641] was printed in Hazard, vol. i., from “New Hampshire files,” and is in Provincial Papers, i. 21. The Laconia grant of Nov. 17, 1629, to Gorges and Mason, was the basis of a trading company, as we have already seen, and those associates took out a new patent, Nov. 3, 1631, of land near the mouth of the Piscataqua. The Laconia patent is in Massachusetts Archives, and is printed in Provincial Papers, i. 38. The second grant is printed in Jenness’s Notes, above cited, Appendix ii. Hilton’s patent of Dover Neck, or wherever it may have extended, of March 12, 1629/30, is cited in the Council Records, and is printed in extenso in Jenness’s Notes, Appendix i., which also should be read for a discussion relative to its boundaries.[642] At the grand division in 1635 Mason had assigned to him the territory between Naumkeag and Piscataqua, dated April 22, “all which lands, with the consent of the Counsell, shall from henceforth be called New Hampshire.” Hazard (i. 384) printed the grant from the “records of the Province of Maine,” and it is also printed in Provincial Papers, i. 33. Mason never improved this grant. All his operations in New Hampshire, or Piscataqua, as the place was called, was as a member of the unfortunate Laconia Company. He died soon after this last grant was issued, and bequeathed the property ultimately to his grandchildren John and Robert Tufton, whose claims were used to annoy the settlers on the soil who had acquired a right to their homesteads by long undisputed possession.[643]

After the union of the New Hampshire towns with Massachusetts, their history forms part of the history of that colony, and the General Court Records may be consulted for information. John S. Jenness’s Transcripts of Original Documents in the English Archives relating to New Hampshire, privately printed, New York, 1876, is a volume of great value. An early map of Maine and New Hampshire, of about the period of 1655, is prefixed to the book. The Appendix to Belknap’s New Hampshire also contains documents of great value. The Collections of the New Hampshire Historical Society, consisting of eight volumes, 1824-1866, are rich in material relating to the State; and the three volumes of Collections published by Farmer and Moore,[644] 1822-1824, in semi-monthly and then in monthly numbers, should not be overlooked; nor should the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Of the general histories, that of Dr. Belknap is the first and the only considerable History of New Hampshire, Philadelphia and Boston, 1784-92, 3 vols. The work early acquired the name of “the elegant History of New Hampshire,” which it deserved. As a writer, Dr. Belknap’s style was simple and “elegant.” Perhaps after Franklin he was the best writer of English prose which New England had produced; and there has been since little improvement upon him. He had the true historical spirit, and was a good investigator.[645] He fell into an error respecting some of the early grants of New Hampshire, and the early part of his History needs revision. He probably never doubted the genuineness of the Wheelwright deed; but John Farmer, the editor of a new edition (1831) of his work, believed that document to be a forgery, and made his book to conform to this idea, though other errors were not corrected. Palfrey’s New England is of the first authority here after Belknap.[646]

Connecticut.—“Quinni-tuk-ut, ‘on long river,’—now Connecticut,—was the name of the valley, or lands on both sides of the river. In one early deed (1636) I find the name written Quinetucquet; in another of the same year, Quenticutt.”[647]

The name “Connecticut,” as designating the country or colony on the river of that name, was used by Massachusetts in their commission of March 3, 1635/36,[648] and it was early adopted by the colonists.[649]

Quinnipiac,—the Indian name of New Haven, written variously, and by President Stiles, on the authority of an Indian of East Haven, Quinnepyooghq,—is probably “longwater place.”[650] The name New Haven was substituted by the Court Sept. 5, 1640.[651]

The first English settlement was made by the Plymouth people at Windsor in October, 1633, when they sent out a barque with materials for a trading-house, and set it up there against the remonstrances of the Dutch, who had themselves established a trading-house at Hartford some time before.[652] The history of this business is well told by Bradford (pp. 311-314), with whose narrative compare Winthrop (pp. 105, 181) and Hubbard (pp. 170, 305 et seq.).

The story of the settlement of the three towns on the Connecticut River by emigrants from Massachusetts is told by Winthrop, passim, and by Trumbull; and the Records of Massachusetts show the orders passed in relation to their removal, and define their political status during the first year of the settlement, and indeed to a later period. The Connecticut Colonial Records give abundant information as to their political relations until the arrival of the Winthrop charter of 1662, when, after some demurring on the part of New Haven, the two small jurisdictions were merged into one.[653] A spirited letter from Mr. Hooker to Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, written in 1638, disclosing his suppressed feelings towards some in the Bay Colony for alleged factious opposition to the emigration to Connecticut, may be seen in Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., i. 3-18. What is called the original Constitution of Connecticut, adopted by the three towns Jan. 14, 1638/39, may be seen in the printed Colonial Records, i. 20-25.[654]

The story of John Winthrop’s second arrival from England, in October, 1635, with a commission from Lord Say and Sele, and Lord Brook and others, and with £2,000 in money, to begin an independent settlement and erect a fortification near the mouth of the Connecticut River, and to be governor there for one year, is told in Winthrop’s Journal (i. 170, 173); and is repeated in full by Trumbull, vol. i. Possession was taken in the following month. The patent to Lord Say and others, which was the basis of this movement, is known as the “old patent of Connecticut,” and may be seen, with Winthrop’s commission, in Trumbull’s History, vol. i., both editions. It purports to be a personal grant from the Earl of Warwick, then the President of the Council for New England, bearing date March 19, 1631 (1632 N.S.). Although the authority by which the grant is made is not given in the document itself, as is usually the case, it has been confidently asserted that the Earl of Warwick had received the previous year a patent for the same territory from the Council for New England, which was subsequently confirmed by the King.[655] The grant was interpreted to convey all the territory lying west of the Narragansett River, one hundred and twenty miles on the Sound, thence onward to the South Sea.[656]

The first and second agreements with Fenwick, the agent of the proprietors, dated Dec. 5, 1644, and Feb. 17, 1646, were first printed by Trumbull.[657] The account of Fenwick’s arrival in the colony, in 1639, with his family, and his settlement, and the naming of Saybrook, may be seen in Winthrop.[658]

The “Capital Laws,” established by Connecticut, Dec. 1, 1642, the first “Code of Laws,” and the court orders, judgments, and sentences of the General and Particular Courts, from 1636 to 1662, are printed in Connecticut Colonial Records.[659]

The contemporaneous accounts of the Pequot War have already been mentioned under “Massachusetts.” What relates specially to Connecticut is largely told in the Colonial Records. Mason’s narrative is by far the best of the original accounts which have been published. The dispute with Massachusetts respecting the division of the conquered territory; the allotments of the same to the soldiers; the account of the younger Winthrop’s settlement in the Pequot country, and his claim to the Nehantick country by an early gift of Sashions, not allowed by the United Colonies,—may be seen in the records of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and in the records of the United Colonies.[660]

The account of the settlement of New Haven by emigrants from Massachusetts—indirectly from the city of London,—in 1638; of their purchases of lands from the natives, and of the formation of their government,—church and civil,—may be seen in Winthrop,[661] and in New Haven Colonial Records.[662]

The Fundamental Articles, or Original Constitution, of the Colony of New Haven, June 4, 1639, which continued in force till 1665, was printed in Trumbull’s History, vol. i., in 1797, in Appendix, no. iv., as also in the later edition, and in the Colonial Records, i. 11-17, in which volume the legislative and judicial history of the colony is recorded for many years. The orders of the General Court, the civil and criminal trials before the Court of Magistrates, with the evidence spread out on the pages of the record, and the sentences following, being, in criminal cases, based on the Laws of Moses, furnish an unpleasant exhibition; perhaps not more so, however, than other primitive colonies would have shown if their record of crimes had been as well preserved. From April, 1644, to May, 1653, the Records of New Haven jurisdiction are lost.

What is known as Governor Eaton’s[663] Code of Laws was sent to London to be printed under the supervision of Governor Hopkins, who had returned to England a few years before; and an edition of five hundred copies appeared in 1656, under the title of New Haven’s Settling in New England, etc. The code was first reprinted by Mr. Royal R. Hinman, at Hartford, in 1838, in a volume entitled The Blue Laws of New Haven Colony, usually called Blue Laws of Connecticut, Quaker Laws of Plymouth and Massachusetts, etc.; and again, in 1858, at the end of the second volume of New Haven Records, from a rare copy in the Library of the American Antiquarian Society.[664] The “Articles of Confederation” of the United Colonies of 1643, whose records are a mine of history in themselves, were prefixed to this code, and were here printed for the first time. The Records were first printed by Hazard in 1794, from the Plymouth copy, and they have more recently been reprinted by the State of Massachusetts in a volume of the Plymouth Records. Each colony had a copy of those records, but the only ones preserved are those of Plymouth and of Connecticut. The latter, containing some entries wanting in the former, are printed at the end of vol. iii. of the Connecticut Colonial Records.

The Quakers gave little disturbance to either of these colonies. While the people in Connecticut were divided with the “Half-Way Covenant” controversy, the Quakers, in July, 1656, made their appearance in Boston. The United Colonies recommended the several jurisdictions to pass laws prohibiting their coming, and banishing those who should come. Connecticut and New Haven took the alarm, and acted upon the advice given. New Haven subsequently increased the penalties at first prescribed, yet falling short in severity of the legislation of Massachusetts.[665]

The territorial disputes of Connecticut and New Haven with the Dutch at Manhados, which began early and were of long continuance, find abundant illustration in Trumbull’s History of Connecticut, and in Brodhead’s History of New York, and in the documentary history, of which the materials were procured by Brodhead, but arranged by O’Callaghan.[666]

The records of the two colonies show the ample provision made for public schools, and indicate a project entertained by New Haven as early as 1648 to found a college,—a scheme not consummated, however, till a later period.

The Winthrop charter of 1662, which united the two colonies, is in Hazard, ii. 597, taken from a printed volume of Charters, London, 1766. It had been printed at New London in 1750, in a volume of Acts and Laws, and is in a volume by Samuel Lucas, London, 1850. The charter bears date April 23, 1662. In an almanac of John Winthrop, the younger, for the year 1662, once temporarily in my possession, and now belonging to the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, I noticed this manuscript note of the former owner, which I copied: “This day, May 10, in the afternoon, the Patent for Connecticut was sealed.” The orders, instructions, and correspondence relating to the procuring of this charter are printed in the Colonial Records, text and Appendix, and in Trumbull, vol. i., text and Appendix.[667]

The Restoration brought its anxieties as well as its blessings. The story of the shelter afforded to the regicides Whalley and Goffe, by New Haven, is an interesting episode. Dr. Stiles’s volume, A History of the Three Judges [including Colonel Dixwell] of King Charles I., etc. (Hartford, 1794), is a minute collection of facts, though not always carefully weighed and analyzed.[668]

The granting of the royal charter of 1662, which was followed next year by that to Rhode Island, brought on the long controversy with that colony as to the eastern boundary of Connecticut; and the revival of the claim of the heirs of the Duke of Hamilton—a claim more easily disposed of—added to the annoyances. The papers relating to these controversies may be seen in the Colonial Records of Connecticut, ii. 526-554, and of Rhode Island, ii. 70-75, 128.[669]

After the union, the earliest printed Book of General Laws for the People within the Jurisdiction of Connecticut was in 1673,—the code established the year before. It was printed at Cambridge.[670]

COLONIAL SECRETARIES.

[These secretaries held office consecutively: Steele, 1636-39; Hopkins, 1639-40; Wells, 1640-48; Cullick, 1648-58; Clark, 1658-63; Allyn, 1663-65.—Ed.]

The authorities for the history of Philip’s War—so disastrous to Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Rhode Island, but from which “Connecticut,” says Trumbull, “had suffered nothing in comparison with her sister colonies”—have already been given under the head of “Massachusetts.” Without citing special documents, it may be said that Trumbull’s History of Connecticut and Palfrey’s New England furnish abundant authority from this time down to the conclusion of the government of New England under Andros, and the narrative of each may be referred to as fitting, ample, and trustworthy. Trumbull’s History, as an original authority, may well compare for Connecticut with Hutchinson’s History for Massachusetts. The first volume (1630-1713) was published in 1797; and, although the titlepage to it reads “Vol. I.,” the author says in the Preface to vol. ii., first printed in 1818 (1713-1764), that he never had any design of publishing another volume. The first volume was reprinted in 1818 as a companion to vol. ii.[671]

The Records of Connecticut for the period embraced in this chapter are abundant, and are admirably edited, with explanatory notes, by Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, of Hartford, who has done so much to illustrate the history of his State, and indeed of New England.[672] I might add that Dr. Palfrey, in writing the History of New England, often had the benefit of Dr. Trumbull’s learning in illustrating many obscure points in Connecticut history.[673]

The New Haven Colony Records end, of course, with the absorption of that colony by Connecticut. These are well edited, in two volumes (1638 to 1649, and 1653 to 1665), with abundant illustrations in the Appendix, by Charles J. Hoadly, M.A., and were published at Hartford in 1857-58.

The Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society have already been referred to.[674]

The New Haven Colony Historical Society is a separate body, devoted to preserving the memorials of that colony. It has issued three volumes of Papers.[675]

Among the general histories of Connecticut was one by Theodore Dwight, Jr., in Harper’s Family Library, 1840; also another by G. H. Hollister, 2 vols., 1855, and enlarged in 1857. A condensed History of the Colony of New Haven, before and after the Union, by E. R. Lambert, was published at New Haven in 1838; and a more extensive History of the Colony of New Haven to its Absorption into Connecticut, by E. E. Atwater, was published in New Haven in 1881.[676] There are some town histories which, for the early period, have almost the character of histories of the State,—like Caulkins’s Norwich (originally 1845; enlarged 1866, and again in 1874) and New London (1852); Orcutt and Beadsley’s Derby (1642-1880); William Cothren’s Ancient Woodbury, 3 vols., published in 1854-79; H. R. Stiles’s Ancient Windsor, 2 vols., 1859-63. Barber’s Connecticut Historical Collections is a convenient manual for ready reference.[677]

Rhode Island.[678]—The first published history of the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was an Historical Discourse, delivered at Newport in 1738, on the centennial of the settlement of Aquedneck, by John Callender, minister of that place, and printed at Boston the next year.[679]

Twenty-seven years afterward,—that is, in 1765,—there appeared in seven numbers of a newspaper (the Providence Gazette), from January 12 to March 30, “An Historical Account of the Planting and Growth of Providence.” This sketch, written by the venerable Stephen Hopkins, then governor of the State, interrupted by the disastrous occurrences of the times, comes down only to 1645, and remains a fragment.[680]

A Gazeteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island, with maps of each State, was published at Hartford in 1819, in 8º, compiled by John C. Pease and John M. Niles. It furnished for the time a large amount of statistical and historical material. The work gives a geographical sketch of each county, with details of each town, and “embraces notices of population, business, etc., together with biographical sketches of eminent men.”

“Memoirs of Rhode Island” were written by the late Henry Bull, of Newport, in 1832, and published in the Rhode Island Republican (newspaper) of that year.[681] A Discourse embracing the Civil and Religious History of Rhode Island, delivered at Newport, April 4, 1838, by Arthur A. Ross, pastor of a Baptist church at Newport, was published at Providence in the same year, and is full on the history of Newport.

In 1853 there was published in New York an octavo volume of 370 pages, entitled History of Rhode Island, by the Rev. Edward Peterson. “This book abounds in errors, and is of no historical value. It is not a continuous history, but is made up of scraps, without chronological arrangement.”[682]

In 1859 and 1860 was published the History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, by Samuel Greene Arnold, in two volumes,[683]—a work honorable alike to its author and to the State. While Mr. Arnold was writing this history, Dr. Palfrey was engaged upon his masterly History of New England. These writers differed somewhat in their interpretation of historical events and in their estimate of historical personages, and the student of New England history should read them both. The value of these works consists not only in the text or narrative parts, but also in the notes, which for the student, particularly in Dr. Palfrey’s book, contain valuable information, in a small compass, upon the authorities on which the narrative rests.

The late George Washington Greene prepared A Short History of Rhode Island, published in 1877, in 348 pages, which formed an excellent compendium, much needed. It is compiled largely from Mr. Arnold’s work.

“The Early History of Narragansett,” by Elisha R. Potter, was published as vol. iii. of the R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., in 1835. It is a valuable collection of events, arranged in chronological order, and illustrated by original documents in an appendix.

“The Annals of the Town of Providence from its First Settlement,” etc., to the year 1832, by William R. Staples, was published, in 1834, as vol. v. of the R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll. The author says that the work does not assume to be a “history;” but it is a valuable and authentic record of events from the time of Roger Williams’s settlement on the banks of the Mooshausic, in 1636, to the year 1832, illustrated by original documents, the whole making 670 pages.

I ought not to omit the mention of several addresses and discourses delivered before the Rhode Island Historical Society, some of which have considerable historical interest, as illustrating the principles on which it is claimed that Rhode Island was founded. Special mention may be made of the Discourse of Judge Pitman, that of Chief Justice Durfee, and that of the late Zachariah Allen.[684]

As Roger Williams is properly held to be the founder of the State of Rhode Island; and as many of his writings had become quite rare, a society was formed in 1865, called the “Narragansett Club,” for the purpose of republishing all his known writings. Vol. i., containing Williams’s Key to the Indian Languages of America, edited by Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull,[685] was issued in 1866; and vol. vi., the concluding volume, in which are collected all the known letters of Williams, in 1874. The volumes were published in quarto form, in antique style, and edited by well-known historical scholars, and are a valuable contribution to the personal history of Roger Williams and to the history of the controversy on religious liberty, of which he was the great advocate.[686]

The earliest publication of any of Williams’s letters was by Isaac Backus, in his History of New England, etc., 1777, 1784, 1796, in three volumes, written with particular reference to the Baptists. It treats largely of Rhode Island history, and is a most authentic work.[687]

A series of Rhode Island Historical Tracts, beginning in 1878, has been issued by Sidney S. Rider, of Providence, each being a monograph on some subject of Rhode Island history. No. 4, on William Coddington in Rhode Island Colonial Affairs, is an unfavorable criticism on the conduct of Coddington in the episode known as “the Usurpation,” by Dr. Henry E. Turner.[688] No. 15, issued in 1882, is a tract of 267 pages, on The Planting and Growth of Providence, by Henry C. Dorr. It is a valuable monograph, and would have been more valuable if authorities had been more freely cited.

One valuable source of the history of Rhode Island is the Records of the colony, and these have been made available for use by publication, under the efficient editorship of the Hon. John Russell Bartlett, for a number of years Secretary of State. To make up for the meagreness of the records in some places, the editor has introduced from exterior sources many official papers, which make good the deficiencies and abundantly illustrate the history of the times. The first volume was issued in 1856, and begins with the “Records of the Settlements at Providence, Portsmouth, Newport, and Warwick, from their commencement to their union under the Colony Charter, 1636 to 1647.”

The early history of Providence is so intimately interwoven with the life of its founder, that some of the excellent memoirs of Roger Williams may be read with profit as historical works. A Memoir of Williams, by Professor James D. Knowles, was published in 1834, and is a minute and conscientious biography of the man; but it is written with a strong bias in favor of Williams where he comes in collision with the authorities of Massachusetts.

A very pleasant memoir of Williams, by Professor William Gammell, based on that of Knowles, was published in 1845, in Sparks’s American Biography, reissued the next year in a volume by itself. This memoir was followed in 1852 by A Life of Roger Williams, by Professor Romeo Elton, published in England, where the author then lived, and in Providence the next year. This is largely based on Knowles’s memoir, but contains some new matter, notably the Sadlier Correspondence.

The original authorities for Williams’s career in Massachusetts and Plymouth are Winthrop and Bradford and the controversial tracts of Cotton and Williams, from which bits of history may be culled. For a full presentation and discussion of the facts and principles involved in Williams’s banishment from Massachusetts, and his alleged offence to the authorities there, see the late Professor Diman’s Editorial Preface to Cotton’s Reply to Williams, in the second volume of the Narragansett Club, above cited; Dr. George E. Ellis’s Lecture on “The Treatment of Intruders and Dissentients by the Founders of Massachusetts,” in Lowell Lectures, Boston, Jan. 12, 1869; Dr. Henry Martyn Dexter’s As to Roger Williams, etc., Boston, 1876;[689] Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., for February, 1873, pp. 341-358; North American Review for January, 1858, art. xiii. p. 673.

In Dr. John Clarke’s Ill News from New England, London, 1653,[690] being a personal narrative of the treatment, the year before, by the authorities of the Bay Colony, of Obadiah Holmes, John Crandall, and John Clarke, and an account of the laws and ecclesiastical polity of that colony, is a brief account of the settlement of Providence and of the island of Rhode Island.

An important episode in the early history of Rhode Island was the career of Samuel Gorton, who settled the town of Warwick. I have already mentioned, under the head of Massachusetts, the original books in which the story for and against him is told,—Simplicitie’s Defence, written by Gorton, and Hypocracie Unmasked, by Edward Winslow. The former was republished in the R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. ii., in 1835, edited by W. R. Staples, with a preface, notes, and appendix of original papers. Winslow’s book, now very rare, has never been reprinted. A “Life of Samuel Gorton,” by John M. Mackie, was published in 1845 in Sparks’s American Biography. After Nathaniel Morton published his New England’s Memorial, in 1669, containing some reflections on Gorton, the latter wrote a letter to Morton, dated “Warwick, June 30, 1669,” in his own defence. Hutchinson had the letter, and printed an abridgment of it in the Appendix to his first volume. Some forty years ago or less, the original letter came into the possession of the late Edward A. Crowninshield, of Boston, and he allowed Peter Force to print it, and it appears entire in vol. iv. of Force’s Historical Tracts, 1846.

The early settlers of Rhode Island had no patent-claim to lands on which they planted. The consent of the natives only was obtained. Williams’s deed, so called, from the Indians, may be seen in vols. iv. and v. R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll.; and that to Coddington and his friends, of Aquedneck, is also in the Appendix to vol. iv. The parchment charter which Williams obtained from the Parliamentary Commissioners, dated March 14, 1643, is lost, but it had been copied several times, and is printed in vols. ii., iii., and iv., R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll. Some copies are dated erroneously March 17. See Arnold’s Rhode Island, i. 114, note.

For a discussion of the “Narragansett Patent,” so called, issued to Massachusetts, dated Dec. 10, 1643, see Arnold, i. 118-120; Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. for February, 1862, pp. 401-406; and June, 1862; pp. 41-77.[691]

The original charter of Charles II., dated July 8, 1663, is extant. It was first printed as prefixed to the earliest digest of laws (Boston, 1719), and has been often reprinted.

The incorporation of Providence plantations under the charter of 1643/44 was delayed for several years, and took place in 1647, when a code of laws was adopted. This code was first printed in 1847, edited by Judge William R. Staples, in a volume entitled The Proceedings of the First General Assembly of “the Incorporation of Providence Plantations,” and the Code of Laws adopted by that Assembly in 1647, with Notes, Historical and Explanatory (64 pages). The original manuscript of these laws is in a volume of the early records in the Secretary of State’s office.

The earliest printed digest of laws, entitled Acts and Laws, was in 1719,—printed at Boston “for John Allen and Nicholas Boone.”[692] In this, the following clause appears as part of a law purporting to have been enacted in March, 1663-64: “And that all men professing Christianity, and of competent estates and of civil conversation, who acknowledge and are obedient to the civil magistrate, though of different judgments in religious affairs (Roman Catholics only excepted), shall be admitted freemen, and shall have liberty to choose and be chosen officers in the colony, both military and civil.” This same clause appears in the four following printed digests named above, and it remained a law of the colony till February, 1783, when the General Assembly formally repealed so much of it as related to Roman Catholics. Rhode Island writers consider it a serious reflection upon the character of the founders of the colony to assert that this clause was enacted at the time indicated; and one writer (Judge Eddy, in Walsh’s Appeal, 2d ed., p. 433) thinks it possible that the clause was inserted in a manuscript copy of the laws sent over to England in 1699, without, of course, being enacted into a law. The clause, it is said, does not exist in manuscript in the archives of the colony, and is not in the manuscript digest of 1708, though Mr. Arnold, History, ii. 492, inadvertently says it is there. If the clause was originally smuggled in among the statutes of Rhode Island at a later period than the date assigned to it (see R. I. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1872-73, p. 64), it was five times formally re-enacted when the several digests named above were submitted by their revising committees, and passed the General Assembly; and it remained a law till 1783.

In 1762, two persons professing the Jewish religion petitioned the Superior Court of the colony to be made citizens. Their prayer was rejected. The concluding part of the opinion of the court is as follows: “Further, by the charter granted to this colony it appears that the free and quiet enjoyment of the Christian religion and a desire of propagating the same were the principal views with which this colony was settled, and by a law made and passed in the year 1663, no person who does not profess the Christian religion can be admitted free of this colony. This Court, therefore, unanimously dismiss this petition, as wholly inconsistent with the first principles upon which the colony was founded and a law of the same now in force” (Arnold, History, ii. 492-495). Arnold says that previous to this decision several Jews and Roman Catholics had been naturalized as citizens by special acts of the General Assembly.

Has there not been a misapprehension as to the bearing of this law or clause disfranchising or refusing to admit to the franchise Roman Catholics and persons not Christians, and as to Roger Williams’s doctrine of religious liberty? The charter of Rhode Island declared that no one should be “molested ... or called in question for any differences of opinion in matters of religion.” The law in question does not relate to religious liberty, but to the franchise. Rhode Island has always granted liberty to persons of every religious opinion, but has placed a hedge about the franchise; and this clause does it. Was it not natural for the founders of Rhode Island to keep the government in the hands of its friends while working out their experiment, rather than to put it into the hands of the enemies of religious liberty? How many shiploads of Roman Catholics would it have taken to swamp the little colony in the days of its weakness? Chalmers (Annals, p. 276) copied his extract of the law in question from the digest of 1730, as per minutes formerly belonging to him in my possession. As an historian where could he seek for higher authority? Indeed, the clause had already been cited by Douglass in his Summary, ii. 83, Boston, 1751; and by the authors of the History of the British Dominions in North America, part i. p. 232, London, 1773. The latter as well as Chalmers omitted the phrase “professing Christianity.” But Chalmers was entirely wrong in his comments upon the clause where he says that “a persecution was immediately commenced against the Roman Catholics.”[693]

THE WINTHROP MAP (Circa 1633).

AMONG the Sloane manuscripts in the British Museum is one numbered “Add: 5,415, G. 3,” whose peculiar interest to the American antiquary escaped notice till Mr. Henry F. Waters sent photographs of it to the Public Library in Boston in 1884, when one of them was laid before the Massachusetts Historical Society by Judge Chamberlain, of that Library (Proceedings, 1884, p. 211). It was of the size of the original, somewhat obscure, and a little deficient on the line where its two parts joined. At the Editor’s request, Mr. Richard Garnett, of the British Museum, procured a negative on a single glass; and though somewhat reduced, the result, as shown in the accompanying fac-simile, is more distinct, and no part is lost.

The map is without date. The topography corresponds in the main with that of the map which William Wood added to his New England’s Prospect (London, 1634), so far as its smaller field corresponds, and suggests the common use of an earlier survey by the two map-makers,—if, indeed, Wood did not depend in part on this present survey. That its observations were the best then made would seem clear from the fact that Governor Winthrop explained it by a marginal key, and added in some places a further description to that given by the draughtsman (as a change in the handwriting would seem to show,—for instance, in the legend on the Merrimac River), if indeed all is not Winthrop’s. Who the draughtsman was is not known. There had been in the colony a man experienced in surveying,—Thomas Graves,—who laid out Charlestown, before Winthrop’s arrival; but he is not known to have remained till the period of the present survey, which, if there has been nothing added to the original draught, was seemingly made as early as that given by Wood. This last traveller left New England, Aug. 15, 1633; and his description of the plantations about Boston at that time, which he professes to make complete, is almost identical with the enumeration on this map, though he gives a few more local names. Wood’s map is dated 1634; but it seems certain that he carried it with him in August, 1633,—a date as late apparently as can be attached to the present draught.

The key added by Winthrop to the north corner of the map reads as follows:—

A: an Iland cont[aining] 100 acres, where the Gouven^r. hathe an orchard & a vineyarde.
B: M^r. Humfryes ferme [farm] house at Sagus [Saugus].
Tenhills: the Gouern^rs. ferme [farm] house.
Meadford: M^r. Cradock ferme [farm] house.
C: the Wyndmill}
D: the fforte } at Boston.
E: the Weere

So far as the rivers are laid thus [shaded], they are navigable w^th the Tide.

[SCALE.]

Scale of 10: Italian miles
320 pches [perches] to the mile,
not taken by Instrument, but by estimate.

In the north the Merrimac is shown to be navigable to a fall. The stream itself is marked Merimack river; it runnes 100 miles up into the Country, and falles out of a ponde 10 miles broad. It receives the Musketaquit riuer [Concord] just south of the scale. The long island near its mouth is Plum Island, but it is not named. The village of Agawam [Ipswich] is connected by roads [dotted lines] with Sagus [Saugus], Salem, Winesemett, and Meadford, which is called “Misticke” in Wood’s text, but “Meadford” in his map. On Cape Anne peninsula Anasquom is marked. The bay between Marblehead and Marblehead Neck is called Marble Harbour, as by Wood in his map. Nahant is marked, as are also Pulln Point, Deere I., Hogg I., Nottles I. Governor’s Island is marked A., referring to the key. Charlestown is called Char:towne. Spott Ponde flows properly through Malden River, not named, into the Mystic; and Mistick river takes the water of a number of ponds. The modern Horn Pond in Woburn is not shown. The three small ponds near a hill appear to be Wedge Pond and others in Winchester; the main water is Mistick pond, 60 fathoms deepe; horn ponde is the modern Spy Pond; Fresh Pond is called 40 fathom deepe. Their watershed is separated by the Belmont hills, not named, from the valley of the Concord. The villages of Waterton and Newtowne [Cambridge] are marked on the Charls River. The peninsula of Boston shows Beacon Hill, not named, while C and D are explained in the key. Muddy river [Muddy Brook in Brookline] and Stony river [Stony Brook in Roxbury] are correctly placed. Rocksbury and Dorchester appear as villages. Hills are shown on Dorchester Neck, or South Boston. Naponsett river is placed with tolerable correctness. The islands in Boston Harbor are all represented as wooded. The waye to Plimouth, beginning at Dorchester, crosses the Weymouth rivers above Wessaguscus [Wessagussett]. Trees and eminences are marked on Nataskette [Hull], and Cohasset is called Conyhassett. The same sign stands for rocks in the Bay and for Indian villages on the land.

It may be well further to notice that since the printing of this volume A Briefe Discription of New England, 1660, by Samuel Maverick, has likewise been discovered in the British Museum by Mr. Waters, and is printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, October, 1884, and in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, January, 1885.—Ed.

[EDITORIAL NOTES.]

A. Bibliographical.—Rhode Island has been fortunate in its bibliographer. Mr. John Russell Bartlett, the editor of the State’s early Records, issued at Providence, in 1864, his Bibliography of Rhode Island, with Notes, Historical, Biographical, and Critical (150 copies printed). Mr. Bartlett began a “Naval History of Rhode Island” in the Historical Magazine, January, 1870. As the adviser of the late Mr. John Carter Brown in the forming of what is now so widely known as the Carter-Brown Library, and as the cataloguer of its almost unexampled treasures, not only of Rhode Island, but of all American history, Mr. Bartlett has also conferred upon the student of American history benefits equalled in the labors of few other scholars in this department. Mr. Brown erected for himself in his Library a splendid monument. There may exist in the Lenox Library a rival in some departments of Americana, but Mr. Bartlett’s Catalogue of the Providence Collection makes its richness better known. Mr. Brown began his collections early, and was enabled to buy from the catalogues of Rich and Ternaux. The Library is now so complete, and its desiderata are so few and so scarce, that it grows at present but slowly. Mr. Brown, a son of Nicholas Brown, from whom the university in Providence received its name, was born in 1797, and died June 10, 1874. But fifty copies of the two sumptuous volumes (1482-1700) constituting the revised edition of the catalogue (there is a third volume, 1700-1800, in a first edition) have been distributed, and they are the Library’s best history; but those not fortunate enough to have access to them will find accounts of it in the Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1876; Rogers’s Libraries of Providence; N.E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., April, 1876; American Journal of Education, xxvii. 237; American Bibliopolist, vi. 77, vii. 91, 228.

The several volumes of the Rhode Island Historical Society, so far as they relate to the period under examination, are noted in the preceding text; but the Society has also issued a volume of Proceedings for the years 1872-1879. Two supplemental publications of the Rhode Island antiquaries have been begun lately,—the Newport Historical Magazine, July, 1880, and the Narragansett Historical Register, July, 1882, James N. Arnold, editor, both devoted to southern Rhode Island.

B. Early Maps of New England.—The cartography of New England in the seventeenth century began with the map of Captain John Smith in 1614 (given in chap. vi.), for we must discard as of little value the earlier maps of Lescarbot and Champlain. The Dutch were on the coast at about the same time, and the best development of their work is what is known as the “Figurative Map” of 1614, which was first made known in the Documents relating to the Colonial History of New York, i. 13, and in O’Callaghan’s New Netherland. The part showing New England is figured in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 57. It had certain features which long remained on the maps, and its names became in later maps curiously mixed with those derived from Smith’s map. It gave the Cape Cod peninsula (here, however, made an island) a peculiar triangular shape; it exaggerated Plymouth’s harbor; it ran Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket into one, and divided Long Island into several parts. The marked feature of the interior was the bringing of the Iroquois (Champlain) Lake close down to the salt water, as Champlain had done in his map of 1612, and as he continued to do in his larger map of 1632. Blaeu, in his Atlas of 1635, while he copied the Figurative Map pretty closely, closed the channel which made Cape Cod an island, and gave the “Lacus Irocociensis” a prolongation in the direction of Narragansett Bay. De Laet, in 1630, had worked on much better information in several respects. Cape Cod is much more nearly its proper shape; and he had got such information from the Dutch settlements up the Hudson as enabled him to place Lake Champlain with fair accuracy. A fac-simile of De Laet’s map is given in Vol. IV. chap. ix. Meanwhile the English had enlarged Smith’s plot, as the map given on an earlier page from Alexander and Purchas (Pilgrimes, iii. 853) shows. Champlain’s plotting in 1632 of the great river of Canada could not, of course, have been known to this map-maker of 1624, while Lescarbot’s was.

Pure local work came in with the map which accompanied Wood’s New England’s Prospect, which is called “The south part of New England as it is planted this yeare, 1634.” It only shows the coast from Narragansett Bay to “Acomenticus,” on the Maine shore, with a corresponding inland delineation. Buzzard’s Bay is greatly misshapen; Cape Cod has something of the contemporary Dutch drawing; and, in a rude way, the watercourses lie like huge snakes in contortions upon the land. There are fac-similes of the map in Palfrey, i. 360; Young’s Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 389, and in other places noted in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 524. Two years later (1636), in Saltonstall’s English version of the atlas of Mercator and Hondius, the English public practically got De Laet’s map; and indeed so late as 1670, the map “Novi Belgii et Novæ Angliæ Delineatio,” which is given alike in Montanus’s De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld and in Ogilby’s America, hardly embodied more exact information. The Hexham English version of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas, intended for the English market, but published in Amsterdam by Hondius and Jannson in 1636 (of which there is a fine copy in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society), in its map of “Nova Anglia,” etc., kept up the commingling of Smith’s plot and names with the present Dutch ones. Blaeu’s of 1635 was the prototype of the chart in Dudley’s Arcano del Mare (1646), of which a fac-simile is given in the preceding chapter.

NEW ENGLAND, 1650.

This is a reduction of a sketch of a part of a manuscript Map of North America, dated 1650, of which a drawing is given in the Massachusetts Archives; Documents Collected in France, ii. 61. The key is as follows:—

1. Sauvages Hurons.
2. Lac des Iroquois [Lake Champlain].
3. Sauvages Iroquois.
4. Sauvages Malectites.
5. Sauvages Etechemins.
6. Pemicuit [Pemaquid].
7. Pentagouet.
8. Isle des Monts Deserts.
9. Baye de Kinibequi.
10. Sauvages Kanibas.
11. Caskobé [Casco Bay].
12. Pescadoué [Piscataqua].
13. Selem [Salem].
14. Baston [Boston].
15. Nova Anglia.
16. Sauvages Pequatis [Pequods].
17. Plymuth.
18. Cap Malabar.
19. Sauvages Narhicans [Narragansetts].
20. Isle de Bloque [Block Island].
21. Isle de Nantochyte [Nantucket].

For the next twenty years the Dutch plotting was the one in vogue. Visscher, in 1652, disjoined the two principal islands south of Cape Cod, and gave a better shape to that peninsula; but Crane Bay (Plymouth) continued to be more prominent than Boston. The French map of Sanson (1656) so far followed the Dutch as to recognize the claims of “Nouveau Pays Bas” to stretch through Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Plymouth Colony, as shown in the sketch in chap. xi. The old Dutch mistakes and the Dutch names characterize Hendrick Doncker’s Paskaert, in 1659, and other of the Hollanders’ sea-charts of this time. In 1660, François du Creux’s (Creuxius) Historia Canadensis converts into a Latin nomenclature, in a curious jumble, the names of the English, Dutch, and French. This map is given in fac-simile in Shea’s Mississippi, p. 50, and also in Vol. IV. of the present work. The next year (1661) Van Loon’s Pascaerte was based on Blaeu and De Laet, and his Zee-Atlas, though not recognized by Asher, represents the best knowledge of the time. There is a copy in Harvard College Library. There are other maps of Visscher of about this same time, in which Cape Cod becomes as excessively attenuated as it had been too large before.

NEW ENGLAND, 1680

This follows a manuscript French map preserved in the Depot des Cartes et Plans at Paris, as shown in a sketch by Mr. Poore in the Massachusetts Archives; Documents Collected in France, iii. 11.

Of the later Dutch charts or maps, the chief place must be given to that in Roggeveen’s Sea-Atlas, which is called in the English version The Burning Fen, and which still insists in calling the Cape Cod peninsula in 1675 a part of “Nieuw Holland,” as does one of Jannson’s of about the same date, in which Smith’s names survive marvellously when those of other towns had long taken their places. A map, La Nouvelle Belgique, covering also New England, and fashioned on one of Jannson’s, is annexed to an article, “Une Colonie Néerlandaise,” by Colonel H. Wauwermans, in the Bulletin de la Société Géographique d’Anvers, iv. 173. The Blaeu map, “Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova,” found in the Atlas of 1685, still preserves most of the older Dutch falsities; and that geographer made no one of these errors so conspicuous as he did in making still nearer than before the approach of “Lacus Irocociensis” to Narragansett Bay. A short dotted boundary-line is made to connect them, and he dispelled the old Dutch claim to southeastern New England, by putting “Nieu Engelland” east of this line, and “Nieu Nederlandt” west of it. This map was substantially followed in Allard’s Minor Atlas, of a few years later. A new English cartography sprang up when there came a demand for geographical knowledge, as the events of Philip’s War engaged general attention. The royal geographer Speed issued in 1676 a map of New England and New York in his Prospect; but he seems to have followed Visscher and the other Dutch authorities implicitly, as did Coronelli and Tillemon in the New England parts of their map of Canada issued in 1688. Stevens, in his Bibliotheca Geographica, p. 229, notes an English map of New England and New York, which he supposes to belong to 1690, “sold by T. Bassett, in Fleet Street,” which is seemingly enlarged from so early a Dutch map as De Laet’s of 1625. The text of Josselyn’s Voyages was used as the basis of A Description of New England, which accompanied in folio a folded plate, entitled “Mapp of New England, by John Seller, Hydrographer to the King.” It is without date, but is mentioned in the London Gazette in 1676, and could not have appeared earlier than 1674, when Josselyn’s book was printed. There is a copy in Harvard College Library; and it shows the coast from Casco Bay to New York, with a corresponding interior. These are precisely the bounds in the map which is given in Mather’s Magnalia in 1702, and which seems, in parts at least, to have been drawn from Seller’s. Sabin (Dictionary, vol. xiii. no. 52,629) gives A Description of New England in general, with a Description of the Town of Boston in particular, London, John Seller, 1682, 4º. Seller is also known to have issued a small sketch map in his New England Almanac, 1685 (copy in Harvard College Library); and still another, of which a fac-simile is given in Palfrey’s New England, iii. 489. There is a map (5 x 4½ inches) of New England by Robert Morden in R. Blome’s Present State of his Majesty’s Isles and Territories in America, 1687, p. 210, which is based on Seller’s, and which has been reproduced by the Bradford Club in their Papers concerning the Attack on Hatfield and Deerfield, New York, 1859. A different map, extending to New France and Greenland, is given in the Amsterdam editions of Blome, 1688 and 1715. Hubbard’s map, accompanying his Narrative of the Troubles in New England, 1677, a rude woodcut,—the first attempt at such work in the colony,—extends only to the Connecticut westerly; but northerly it goes far enough to take in the White Hills, which in the London reissue of the map are called “Wine Hills.” This is also given by Palfrey, iii. 155, after the London plate, and further notes upon it will be found in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 328. There is also a detailed delineation of the New England coast in John Thornton’s Atlas Maritimus, 1701-21.

In this enumeration of the maps or charts which give New England, or any considerable part of it, on a scale sufficient for detail, it is thought that every significant draft is mentioned, though some repetitions, particularly by the Dutch, have been purposely omitted.

Modern maps of New England, which indicate the condition of this period, will be found in Palfrey’s New England, vol. i., showing the geography of 1644, and in vol. iii. that of 1689; and in Uhden’s Geschichte der Congregationalisten, Leipsic, 1840.

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