[126] Odiorne's Point is in Rye, New Hampshire. The settlement began under the auspices of a company, in which Gorges and Mason were leading spirits. Their grant covered the territory between the Merrimac and Sagadahoc rivers. Under its authority, David Thompson and others settled at Little Harbor, and built what was subsequently known as Mason's Hall. Disliking his situation, Thompson removed the next spring to the island now bearing his name in Boston Bay. From this nucleus sprung the settlements at Great Island and Portsmouth. The settlement at Hilton's Point was nearly coincident.
[127] Peace with the thirteen colonies was proposed under the administration of Rockingham, about the last official act of his life. His name is often met with in Portsmouth.
[128] The house stands at the north end of Manning, formerly Wentworth Street, and is thought from its size to have been a public-house. The same house was also occupied by Lieutenant-Governor John, son of Samuel Wentworth. Samuel was the son of William, the first settler of the name. He had been an innkeeper, and had swung his sign of the "Dolphin" on Great Island. Hon. John Wentworth, of Chicago, is the biographer of his family.
[129] His second wife was Henrietta du Roy, daughter of Frederick Charles du Roy, generalissimo to the King of Denmark.
[130] Bennington, Vermont, is named from Governor Wentworth.
[131] Her grandfather, Hon. Richard Hilton, of Newmarket, was grandson of Edward, the original settler of Dover, New Hampshire, and had been a justice of the Superior Court of the Province.—John Wentworth.
[132] Frances Deering Wentworth married John just two weeks after the decease of her first husband, Theodore Atkinson, also her cousin, and in the same church from which he had been buried—matter for such condolence and reproof as Talleyrand's celebrated "Ah, madame," and "Oh, madame." Benning Wentworth's widow married Colonel Michael Wentworth, said to have been a retired British officer. He was a great horseman and a free liver. Once he rode from Boston to Portsmouth between sunrise and sunset. Having run through a handsome estate, he died under suspicion of suicide, leaving his own epitaph, "I have eaten my cake." Colonel Michael was the host, at the Hall, of Washington. In 1817, the house at Little Harbor was purchased by Charles Cushing, whose widow was a daughter of Jacob Sheaffe.
[133] "Paul Jones shall equip his Bonne Homme Richard; weapons, military stores can be smuggled over (if the English do not seize them); wherein, once more Beaumarchais, dimly as the Giant Smuggler, becomes visible—filling his own lank pocket withal."—Carlyle, "French Revolution," vol. i., p. 43.
[134] Mather and Hutchinson deal largely with it. Upham and Drake have compiled, arranged, and analyzed it.
[135] Exod. xxii., 18 (1491 b.c.): "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."