Page 83. Pettaquamscut town. South Kingston, Rhode Island. The Narragansett stronghold lay sixteen miles away, in what is now the town of North Kingston.
Page 83. George Fox. Founder of the Society of Friends, who visited America in 1671-72.
Page 84. Connecticut had sent her men. Of the army of a thousand, five hundred and twenty-seven were furnished by Massachusetts, and the remainder by Connecticut and Plymouth.
Page 85. On a Fortification at Boston begun by Women. This poem occurs on pages 30-31 of "New England's Crisis," and not, as Duyckinck states, at the beginning. The author, Benjamin Tompson, "learned schoolmaster and physician, and ye renowned poet of New England," as the epitaph upon his tombstone puts it, was born at Braintree, Massachusetts, July 14, 1642, graduated from Harvard in 1662, and after serving as master of the Boston Latin School and Cambridge Preparatory School, died at Cambridge in 1675.
Page 85. Sudbury's battle. The Indian attack was made early in the morning of April 21, and lasted practically all the day. News of it soon reached the neighboring towns, and relief parties were started forward. The Indians were on the lookout for them. A party of eleven men from Concord walked into an ambush and only one escaped; eighteen troopers from Boston finally got into the town with a loss of four; and a party of fifty from Marlboro, under Captain Samuel Wadsworth, were caught in an adroitly prepared trap, out of which but thirteen came alive.
Page 99. Charles of Estienne. Charles de St. Estienne was a son of Claude de la Tour, a nobleman who, in 1610, had been forced by poverty to seek his fortune in the New World. They came to Port Royal, shared in the vicissitudes of the little settlement, and were among those who took to the woods after its destruction by the English. Among the fugitives was the Sieur de Biencourt, who held a grant to the country about Port Royal. They built some rude cabins, cultivated little patches of ground, and raised a fort of logs and earth near Cape Sable, which they called Fort St. Louis. Biencourt died in 1623, and Charles de la Tour took command of the fort and assumed control of Biencourt's property, claiming that Biencourt had so willed it. Another fort was built on the River St. John, and La Tour was appointed by the king lieutenant-governor over Fort Louis, Port la Tour, and dependencies.
At about the same time, Richelieu sent out an expedition to take formal possession of New France, and named Isaac de Launay de Razilly governor of all Acadia. He made his settlement at La Hève, on the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, but died in 1635, and his deputy, Charles de Menou, Chevalier D'Aulnay, asserted his right to command in the colony. Thereupon began between him and Charles de la Tour that famous struggle for the possession of Acadia which forms so romantic a passage in American history.
Page 101. Pentagoet shall rue. La Tour was unable to avenge himself, but time did it for him. D'Aulnay was drowned in 1650, and La Tour was appointed governor of Acadia. In 1653 he married D'Aulnay's widow, Jeanne de Motin.
Page 105. Pentucket. The Indian name for Haverhill.
Page 106. Lovewell's Fight. This ballad, which is of extraordinary interest as the oldest American war ballad extant, was preserved in "The | History | of the | Wars of New England with the Eastern Indians, | or a | Narrative | of their continued perfidy and cruelty, | from the 10th of August, 1703, | to the Peace renewed 13th of July, 1713, | and from the 25th of July, 1722, | to their Submission 15th December, 1725, | which was Ratified August 5th, 1726. | By Samuel Penhallow, Esqr. | Boston, 1726." This was reprinted at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1859, and the ballad occurs on page 129.