The Civil War having broken out in 1642 Sir Ferdinando Gorges was too much engaged at home to pay any attention to Maine, "for when he was between three and four score years of age did personally engage in our Royal Martyr's service; and particularly in the siege of Bristow, and was plundered and imprisoned several times, by reason whereof he was discountenanced by the pretended Commissioners for foreign plantations."[159] Soon after his exploits at Bristol, Gorges died after proving himself a man of resolute purpose, but endowed with narrow ideas. He had certainly taken an active part in the struggle for gain and position amongst a large number of the most worthless and servile courtiers, but still around him and his memory there is a halo of grandeur, borrowed perhaps from the generation to which he really belonged, nevertheless reflecting upon his person something of that glory that ought to belong to him who was the last figure of that grand procession of giants which numbered amongst its train, Gilbert and Drake, Smith and Raleigh.
No sooner had Gorges passed away than Edward Rigby claimed the whole of Maine under a grant from the New England Company. Against this the heirs of Sir Ferdinando put in a strong counter-claim; the decision between the disputants was left to the authorities in Massachusetts, who divided the towns into equal halves, three being allotted to Rigby, and three to the Gorges claimant. The inhabitants of the colony were not consulted, and in 1649 they took the matter into their own hands and declared themselves a body politic with an elective governor and council. But this was not to last. In the early days of the settlement the colonists showed no signs of religious bigotry or of any religious views at all, but gradually they came to sympathise with both the religion and the political opinions of Massachusetts, so that between 1651 and 1658 the townships of Maine readily accepted the authority of the greater colony.
Soon after the Restoration, Ferdinando Gorges, the grandson of the original patentee, sought to assert his authority over Maine, but his exertions were not supported by the Crown, and he was unsuccessful. In 1665 the home authorities set up a provisional government in the colony, but concerning its history very little is known. According to the Commissioners of that year the inhabitants themselves petitioned that they might continue under his Majesty's immediate government. They expressed their gratitude to Charles II. for his "fatherly care of them after so long a death inflicted on their minds and fortunes by the usurpation of the Massachusetts power,"[160] and they ask that the insults of others towards them may be prevented for the future by the appointment of Sir Robert Carr as their governor. But this statement seems very improbable and can hardly have expressed the general wishes of the people.
It is not surprising that Sir Robert Carr was anxious to obtain the government of the colony, as from contemporary descriptions it appears to have been a fertile and productive territory. "In these Provinces are great store of wild ducks, geese, and deer, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, barberries, bilberries, several sorts of oaks and pines, chestnuts and walnuts, sometimes four or five miles together; the more northerly the country, the better the timber is accounted."[161] The true value of Maine was realised by William Dyre, who pointed out to Charles II. the manifold advantages that he would gain if he purchased Maine for himself. By such an action the King would have absolute dominion over those seas and might settle a duty on all fisheries there; at the same time he might very easily reduce the turbulent spirits in Massachusetts "to a ready subjection," while enriching himself with masts, tar, timber, etc., and thus "conduce to the safety of his maritime affairs."[162] There were, however, other very different views on Maine, and John Josselyn, an Englishman of good family, does not speak well of either the country or its inhabitants, but there are reasons for supposing that he may have been maliciously inclined. The people of Maine in 1675 "may be divided," he writes, "into Magistrates, Husbandmen or Planters, and fishermen; of the magistrates some be Royalists, the rest perverse Spirits, the like are the planters and fishers.... The planters are or should be restless pains takers, providing for their Cattle, planting and sowing of Corn ... but if they be of a droanish disposition as some are, they become wretchedly poor and miserable.... They have a custom of taking Tobacco, sleeping at noon, sitting long at meals sometimes four times in a day, and now and then drinking a dram of the bottle extraordinarily."[163]
The people of Maine may have been all that Josselyn said, but it is far from likely. They were sufficiently alert to resent the government of the Crown, and in 1668 the majority of the settlers acquiesced in the reassertion of authority by Massachusetts. For ten years the quarrel between Ferdinando Gorges and Massachusetts continued, but in 1678, although his grandfather is reported to have spent £20,000 on the colony, the grandson's claims were extinguished by the purchase of his rights for £1250. From this moment Maine ceased to exist as a separate colony, and continued incorporated with Massachusetts for many years.
The last of this early group of colonies was New Hampshire, which, in turn, like its weaker brethren, became amalgamated with the colony of Massachusetts. Early in the reign of Charles I., Captain John Mason, with Sir Ferdinando Gorges and others, formed for colonial purposes the Laconia Company. When Gorges was granted rights in Maine in 1635, Captain John Mason also received a grant of territory to the south, where a settlement was formed, and though by no means a true political community, was called New Hampshire. Mason died soon after the naming of his colony and received no benefits from his grant, which had embraced two earlier settlements: the first founded by David Thompson near the Piscataqua; the second fifteen miles up the Cocheco, founded by Bristol and Shrewsbury merchants, who had transferred their rights to Lord Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke. It was in this latter stretch of territory that purely independent settlements were made, such as Dover, Exeter, and Hampton. The latter town, realising its weakness as an independent community, soon chose to be regarded as within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.
The authorities of Massachusetts undoubtedly suffered from "earth hunger," and the transfer of Hampton was merely the first of a series of aggressions, for between 1642 and 1643 the other towns of New Hampshire were swallowed within the greedy maw of the stronger colony. No remonstrance came from England, for the people of the home country had enough difficulties to contend with; while the Mason family appear to have made no serious attempts to recover their rights. After the Restoration, however, following the example of Ferdinando Gorges, the heirs of Mason petitioned the Privy Council to restore to them the rights and privileges contained in the grant of 1635. The law officers of the Crown took the matter into serious consideration, and although their verdict was against the Mason family, they declared at the same time that the colony of New Hampshire was outside the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, which had annexed it and wrongfully renamed it Norfolk. This was one more blow for the New England Confederation and for Massachusetts in particular. The King and his ministers were only too pleased to have had such an opportunity, for the Royal Commissioners had but recently accused Massachusetts of disloyalty. They had, in fact, declared that unless the King punished the authorities, the well-affected inhabitants would never dare to own themselves loyal subjects. To better effect the total subjugation of the colony, one of the Commissioners, Sir Robert Carr, proposed that he should be made governor of New Hampshire, a proposal which shows only too clearly the selfish aims of the Crown officials. The actual state of New Hampshire did not seem to trouble the Commissioners, and whilst the bickering between the home country and Massachusetts continued, the unfortunate inhabitants of New Hampshire were suffering all the horrors of the already mentioned King Philip's Indian war. For this reason the settlers took the matter into their own hands and turned to the more powerful colony of Massachusetts for assistance and protection. In 1678 the inhabitants of Portsmouth and Dover supplicated the Crown to be kept under the jurisdiction of the stronger colony. The petition from Dover is particularly noteworthy because of its tawdry character. The petitioners speak of the favour of his Majesty, "which like the sweet influences of superior or heavenly bodies to the tender plants have cherished us in our weaker beginnings, having been continued through your special grace, under your Majesty's protection and government of the Massachusetts, to which we voluntarily subjected ourselves many years ago, yet not without some necessity in part felt for want of government and in part feared upon the account of protection."[164] In spite of this petition the Crown created New Hampshire a separate province, with a council and representative assembly. The first governor selected was John Cutts, "a very just and honest but ancient and infirm man,"[165] and with his appointment the people of Massachusetts revoked all former commissions.
The colony did not forget its old guardian, and looked upon it always with loyal affection, a feeling which was intensified during the tyrannical governorship of Edward Cranfield. From 1682 to 1685 this man's disgraceful conduct was tolerated, but at last the men of New Hampshire could bear his despotism no longer, broke into open rebellion, and Cranfield fled for refuge to the West Indies. The desired result was immediately obtained, for New Hampshire was reunited to Massachusetts. This, however, was not to last for long, for after the Revolution in England the proprietorship of New Hampshire was again debated. Samuel Allen had purchased from the heirs of Captain Mason any rights which they continued to imagine they possessed; and by the corrupt connivance of an English official, Allen succeeded in obtaining a proprietary governorship with a council partly nominated by the Crown and partly by himself. It is a remarkable fact that, unlike the other colonies at this time, New Hampshire obtained no charter. The only freedom allowed to its inhabitants was the exercise of a few independent rights by means of the representative assembly elected by the freeholders.
The acceptance of the Revolution in America marks an epoch of American history. All the New England colonies had been established, and had either proved themselves sturdy enough to stand alone, or had been forced to find shelter beneath the wing of the more powerful Connecticut or Massachusetts. The New England Confederation had been tried and found wanting. The time for union was evidently not ripe, but this embryo of the United States ceased to exist at identically the hour it was most wanted. A union of all the colonies was what might have been expected when French aggression and Canadian pluck taxed all the resources of the colonists; the scheme of union, however, failed, and the French had to be met in that haphazard and unprepared way in which, it would appear from history, Englishmen are accustomed not only to meet supreme danger, but to come through it with success.