This paper clears up many obscurities in our early New England history, and gives us definite information which we have long desired to obtain. It was probably presented to Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, who was then Charles the Second's Lord High Chancellor. It may be the paper referred to by Maverick in his letter to the earl, printed in the Collections of the New York Historical Society for 1869, page 19. That letter and others in the same volume should be read in connection with the present paper. They show the persistency displayed by Maverick in his efforts to deprive New England, and particularly Massachusetts, of the right of self-government which had so long been enjoyed here. The same spirit is shown in his letters printed in the third volume of the New York Colonial Documents. The death of Maverick, which occurred between October 15, 1669, and May 15, 1676, did not bring repose to the people of Massachusetts. In the latter year a new assailant of their charter appeared in the person of Edward Randolph (see Register, xxxvi. 155), whose assaults on their liberties did not cease till the charter was wrested from them, and the government under it came to an end May 20, 1686.
The document here printed is in the British Museum, Egerton MSS. 2395, ff. 397-411. The volume containing it was in private hands till 1875, when on the sixteenth of February in that year it was sold at auction by Messrs. Sotheby & Co., London, and bought by the Trustees of the British Museum.
The long residence of Mr. Maverick, the writer of this "Description of New England," on these shores, and the opportunities which he is known to have had to learn personally the facts here stated, give it greater weight than it would have had were it merely the observations of a transient visitor to the New World.
This document was read before the Massachusetts Historical Society by John T. Hassam, A.M., in October, 1884, and is printed in its Proceedings, vol. xxi. p. 231. It was also printed in the New-England Historical and Genealogical Register for January, 1885, and the type set for that periodical have been used to print the present issue.
Boston, Massachusetts, January 1, 1885.
A BRIEFE DISCRIPTION OF NEW ENGLAND AND THE
SEVERALL TOWNES THEREIN,
TOGETHER WITH THE PRESENT GOVERNMENT THEREOF.
Pem˜aquid.—Westward from Penobscott (which is the Southermost Fort in Nova Scotia) fourteen Leagues of is Pem˜aquid. in which River Alderman Alworth of Bristole, setled a Company of People in the yeare 1625, which Plantation hath continued and many Families are now settled there. There was a Patent granted for it by his Maties: Royall Grandfather and by vertue of that Patent they hold the Islands of Monahegan and Damerells Coue, and other small ones adjacent Commodious for fishing.