In this conflict between landed class and people, the only hope of the mass of the people lay in getting the favorable attention of royal governors. At least one of these considered earnestly and conscientiously the grave existing abuses and responded to popular protest which had become bitter.
A CONFLICT BETWEEN LAND MAGNATES AND PEOPLE.
This official was the Earl of Bellomont. Scarcely had he arrived after his appointment as Captain-General and Governor of Massachusetts Bay, New York and other provinces, when he was made acquainted with the widespread discontent. The landed magnates had not only created an abysmal difference between themselves and the masses in possessions and privileges, but also in dress and air, founded upon strict distinctions in law. The landed aristocrat with his laces and ruffles, his silks and his gold and silver ornaments and his expensive tableware, his consciously superior air and tone of grandiose authority, was far removed in established position from the mechanic or the laborer with his coarse clothes and mean habitation. Laws were long in force in various provinces which prohibited the common people from wearing gold and silver lace, silks and ornaments. Bellomont noted the sense of deep injustice smouldering in the minds of the people and set out to confiscate the great estates, particularly, as he set forth, as many of them had been obtained by bribery.
It was with amazement that Bellomont learned that one man, Colonel Samuel Allen, claimed to own the whole of what is now the state of New Hampshire. When, in 1635, the Plymouth Colony was about to surrender its charter, its directors apportioned their territory to themselves individually. New Hampshire went by lot to Captain John Mason who, some years before, had obtained a patent to the same area from the company. Charles I had confirmed the company's action. After Mason's death, his claims were bought up by Allen for about $1,250. Mason, however, left an heir and protracted litigation followed. In the meantime, settlers taking advantage of these conflicting claims, proceeded to spread over New Hampshire and hew the forests for cleared agricultural land. Allen managed to get himself appointed governor of New Hampshire in 1692 and declared the whole province his personal property and threatened to oust the settlers as trespassers unless they came to terms. There was imminent danger of an uprising of the settlers, who failed to see why the land upon which they had spent labor did not belong to them. Bellomont investigated; and in communication, dated June 22, 1700, to the Lords of Trade, denounced Allen's title as defective and insufficient, and brought out the charge that Allen had tried to get his confirmation of his, Allen's, claims by means of a heavy bribe.
ATTEMPTED BRIBERY CHARGED.
"There was an offer made me," Bellomont wrote, "of £10,000 in money, but I thank God I had not the least tempting thought to accept of the offer and I hope nothing in this world will ever be able to attempt me to betray England in the least degree. This offer was made me three or four times." Bellomont added: "I will make it appear that the lands and woods claimed by Colonel Allen are much more valuable than ten of the biggest estates in England, and I will rate those ten estates at £300,000 a piece, one with another, which is three millions. By his own confession to me at Pescattaway last summer, he valued the Quit Rents of his lands (as he calls 'em) at £22,000 per annum at 3d per acre of 6d in the pound of all improv'd Rents; then I leave your lordships to judge what an immense estate the improv'd rents must be, which (if his title be allowed) he has as good a right to the forementioned Quit Rents. And all this besides the Woods which I believe he might very well value at half the worth of the lands. There never was, I believe, since the world began so great a bargain as Allen has had of Mason, if it be allowed to stand good, that all this vast estate I have been naming should be purchased for a poor £250 and that a desperate debt, too, as Col. Allen thought. He pretends to a great part of this province as far Westward as Cape St. Ann, which is said to take in 17 of the best towns in this province next to Boston, the best improved land, and, (I think Col. Allen told me) 8 or 900,000 acres of their land. If Col. Allen shall at any time go about to make a forcible entry on these lands he pretends to (for, to be sure, the people will never turn tenants to him willingly) the present occupants will resist him by any force he shall bring and the Province will be put to a combustion and what may be the course I dread to think."...[11]
But the persistent Allen did not establish his claim. Several times he lost in the litigation, the last time in 1715. His death was followed by his son's death; and after sixty years of fierce animosities and litigation, the whole contention was allowed to lapse. Says Lodge: "His heirs were minors who did not push the controversy, and the claim soon sank out of sight to the great relief of the New Hampshire people, whose right to their homes had so long been in question."[12]
Similarly, another area, the entirety of what is now the State of Maine, went to the individual ownership of Sir Fernandino Gorges, the same who had betrayed Essex to Queen Elizabeth and who had received rich rewards for his treachery.[13] The domain descended to his grandson, Fernando Gorges, who, on March 13, 1677, sold it by deed to John Usher, a Boston merchant, for £1,250. The ominous dissatisfaction of the New Hampshire and other settlers with the monopolization of land was not slighted by the English government; at the very time Usher bought Maine the government was on the point of doing the same thing and opening the land for settlement. Usher at once gave a deed of the province to the governor and company of Massachusetts, of which colony and later, State, it remained a part until its creation as a State in 1820.[14]
These were two notable instances of vast land grants which reverted to the people. In most of the colonies the popular outcry for free access to the land was not so effective. In Pennsylvania, after the government was restored to Penn, and in part of New Jersey conditions were more favorable to the settlers. In those colonies corrupt usurpations of the land were comparatively few, although the proprietary families continued to hold extensive tracts. Penn's sons by his second wife, for instance, became men of great wealth.[15] The pacific and conciliatory Quaker faith operated as a check on any local extraordinary misuse of power. Unfortunately for historical accuracy and penetration, there is an obscurity as to the intimate circumstances under which many of the large private estates in the South were obtained. The general facts as to their grants, of course, are well known, but the same specific, underlying details, such as may be disinterred from Bellomont's correspondence, are lacking. In New York, at least, and presumably during Fletcher's sway of government in Pennsylvania, great land grants went for bribes. This is definitely brought out in Bellomont's official communications.