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]