CHAPTER I.

NEW ENGLAND-DEVELOPMENT.

Although the shores of New England were touched by the early voyagers only a few years after the discovery of America by Columbus, a hundred years went by before that section was outlined in any minute way. It is supposed to have been first coasted by Sebastian Cabot in 1498, and by Verrazani in 1523 and 1524, but it was not until the beginning of the Seventeenth Century that much attention was paid to it.

In 1602 an English sailor, by the name of Bartholomew Gosnold, commanded an expedition for exploration in "the north part of Virginia" with a view to the establishment of a colony. On this voyage he first saw land in Massachusetts Bay, probably near what is now Salem harbor; then sailing southward he discovered and named Cape Cod. His discoveries terminated at Marthas Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands. This exploration was absolutely new and aroused much interest in that region. The next year, 1603, Martin Pring coasted from Maine to Marthas Vineyard, collecting sassafras, and in 1605 George Weymouth commanded a vessel which reconnoitered the same coast, with an eye to settlement, and ascended either the Kennebec or the Penobscot River fifty or sixty miles. He particularly noted and secured specimens of the white pine, and from that fact its popular name in Europe is Weymouth pine.

At the time of these explorations, however, New England had been granted by the Crown for purposes of exploration, settlement and exploitation. The first grant seems to have been made by Queen Elizabeth, in 1578, to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, an elder half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh. This charter empowered him for the next six years to discover "such remote heathen and barbarous lands not actually possessed by any Christian prince or people" as he might be fortunate enough to find, and to occupy the same as their proprietor. His colonizing expedition accomplished nothing, except to go through the form of taking possession of the island of Newfoundland.

In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh obtained a patent precisely like Gilbert's and sent two ships to explore the country. The record of their voyage, under Arthur Barlow and Phillip Amidas, says that on July 2 "the presence of shallow water and the smell of sweet flowers warned them that land was near. Coasting along for about one hundred and twenty miles the voyagers reached an inlet, and, with some difficulty, entered it. They

then solemnly took possession of the land in the Queen's name and then delivered it over to Raleigh according to his patent." They found that the land which they had touched was an island. It was Roanoke Island, within the present limits of North Carolina. The story of the later settlement of Virginia is an interesting one, but we have to do here with the question of titles.

EARLY PATENTS AND COLONIES.

John Fiske thus describes the next step in this direction: "In 1606 a great joint-stock company was formed for the establishment of two colonies in America. The branch which was to take charge of the proposed southern colony had its headquarters in London; the management of the northern branch was in Plymouth, in Devonshire. Hence the two branches are commonly spoken of as the London and Plymouth companies. The former was also called the Virginia Company, and the latter the North Virginia Company, as the name of Virginia was then loosely applied to the entire Atlantic Coast north of Florida. The London Company had jurisdiction from 34 to 38 degrees north latitude; the Plymouth Company from 45 degrees down to 41 degrees; the intervening territory, between 38 degrees and 41 degrees, was to go to whichever company should first plant a self-supporting colony."

Under the Plymouth Company there was considerable exploration of the New England Coast and something of a fishing industry was established. The London Company falling into royal disfavor, the Plymouth Company sought new letters-patent, with an enlargement of its domain, and on November 3, 1620, King James incorporated forty of his subjects, some of them members of his household and his government, the most wealthy and powerful of the English nobility, as the "Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering and governing New England in America." This body was commonly known as "The Council for New England."

The territory, which was conferred on them with absolute property rights and unlimited powers of government, extended from the 40th to the 48th degree of north latitude or from midway between Sandy Hook and Coney Island to north of the northernmost point of Maine-from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The Council for New England had the power to grant sub-charters, and it was under its authority that subsequent grants were made.

The first colony established in due form in New England was that at Plymouth. In 1619 and 1620 patents were secured from the London Company and in the latter year the "Pilgrim Fathers" set out for the New World with the intention of landing in the northern part of that company's domain, but, as a matter of fact, landed at Plymouth, on

Cape Cod Bay. This location was unauthorized, and so in 1621 a new patent from the Council for New England was received, signed by the Duke of Hamilton, the Duke of Lennox, the Earl of Warwick, Lord Sheffield and Sir Ferdinando Gorges. This patent recognized the colony and made small grants of land to individuals and to the colony as a whole, but in 1629 a new patent granted to William Bradford and his associates the territory between the "Coahasset" and Narragansett rivers and between the Atlantic and a point in the interior. This approximately fixed the present boundary between Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony originated in two successive Dorchester companies, which were succeeded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, under a charter granted on March 4, 1629, to "The Governor and the Company of Massachusetts Bay." It granted territory from three miles north of the Merrimac River to three miles south of the Charles River, from the Atlantic to the "Western Ocean," and in 1630 the Puritans landed and occupied Charlestown and Shawmut, or what is now Boston proper. These two colonies were united in 1692 and thus defined, with approximate accuracy, the present north and south boundaries of Massachusetts, the western boundary being fixed by the adjustment made with New York, leaving Massachusetts, however, its territory in what is now the central West.

The establishment of Maine and New Hampshire introduced two individuals prominently concerned in the early land grants of New England, whose careers had so vital a bearing upon subsequent history that special mention should be made of them here. They were Captain John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges.

Mason was a native of Norfolk County, England, where he was born in 1556. As a young man he served in the navy. In 1615 he was made Governor of Newfoundland, whither he went and of which, in 1620, he published a description. In 1617 he explored the coast of New England. In 1624 Mason was obliged to withdraw personal attention from his affairs in America on account of the war between England and Spain, in which his services were required as a naval officer of experience. He was advanced to the office of treasurer and paymaster of the English army in the war.

Sir Ferdinando Gorges, born in 1565 in Somersetshire, was a man of much prominence in English public affairs. For thirty years he was captain of the Castle and Island of St. Nicholas, at Plymouth, and was a prominent member and the treasurer of the Plymouth Company. He, too, in 1624, was obliged to postpone his American projects on account of the war.

These two men were instrumental in securing the first land patent

granted by the Plymouth Company, which was issued to Sir William Alexander, covering a tract which he called New Scotland.

In 1621 or 1622 the land lying between the Naumkeag and the Merrimac rivers, lying entirely within the present boundaries of Massachusetts, was granted by the Council for New England to Captain John Mason, who called it Marianna.

August 10, 1622, the land lying upon the sea coast between the Merrimac and the Kennebec rivers, and extending sixty miles into the country, was granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason jointly. These two men, of high position and much influence, thus became proprietors of a large area in New England within two years after the date of the first permanent settlement. Seven years later, when Mason and Gorges were relieved of their military duties, they agreed to a division of their Province of Maine, so called, and on November 7, 1629, the Council for New England granted Mason a patent of all that part of the Province of Maine lying between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua rivers and he called it New Hampshire. Almost immediately thereafter Gorges and Mason procured a grant from the Council for a large tract reaching to Lake Champlain, from which region the French had just been driven. This grant was called Laconia. For the purpose of advancing their interests in Laconia as well as on the Piscataqua, Mason and Gorges joined with them six London merchants under the style of the Laconia Company, and received also a grant of a tract of land lying on both sides of the Piscataqua River on the sea coast within the territory already owned by Gorges and Mason severally.

Many other grants were made, beginning with 1623, some of them conflicting with previous ones. The coast from the Piscataqua to the Kennebec was covered by six patents, the most important bordering on Casco Bay and named Ligonia. But in 1639 Gorges was made Lord Proprietor of Maine, with practically sovereign powers. In 1677 Massachusetts purchased from the Gorges heirs all their interest in the Province and in 1691 a new charter was issued by William and Mary combining the provinces of Acadia, Maine and Sagadahoc, with the Massachusetts colonies proper, into one province; so that Maine was thereafter, until 1820, a part of Massachusetts. In the shifting of titles in northern New England, however, New Hampshire was considered a royal province, its governors being appointed by the Crown.

Connecticut had its origin in two independent colonies, those of Connecticut and New Haven. Although claimed by the Dutch, and to a certain extent occupied by them, about 1,635 emigrants from Massachusetts Bay settled on the Connecticut and set up an independent government. The New Haven colony was established in 1638 and it also in

stituted an independent government. On April 20, 1662, Charles II issued a royal charter to the freemen of Connecticut, under the name of "The Governor and Company of the English Colony of Connecticut in New England in America," and granted to it all that part of New England south of the Massachusetts line and west of the Narragansett River or Narragansett Bay and extending to the "South Sea." This was the basis of the Connecticut colonial territories in the West. The four colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut and New Haven formed a New England confederacy which lasted from 1643 to 1684.

Rhode Island always remained an independent commonwealth, with the exception of a short period of forced consolidation with the other New England colonies, until it entered the Union in 1790. On March 14, 1644, Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, secured a charter for the incorporation of "The Providence plantations in Narragansett Bay in New England." This combined the three colonies of Providence, Aquidneck and Warwick.

To this point the main facts as to the origin of the present New England states have been given except regarding Vermont. The colonies of Connecticut and Massachusetts extended by charter west to the Pacific Ocean, but, by a grant of Charles II, New York was bounded on the east by the Connecticut River, thus conflicting with the express letter of the Massachusetts and Connecticut charters. After a long controversy the line of division between these colonies was fixed, by mutual consent, at twenty miles east of the Hudson River, running in a nearly north and south direction. But this did not settle the western boundary of New Hampshire, which had no such definite claim to western territory. On the assumption, however, that the western boundary of New Hampshire should be the western boundary of Massachusetts extended north, its Governor secured authority from the King to issue patents for unimproved lands west of the Connecticut. This led to the long dispute over the socalled "New Hampshire grants" between New Hampshire and New York, which subject will be treated more fully in connection with Vermont. While the New Hampshire grants remained undisturbed in the hands of the actual settlers, Vermont was technically a part of New York until its admission into the Union in 1791.

In this brief review of the basis of the division of territory in New England no attempt has been made to mention all the charters which had bearing on boundary lines and authority, or all of the many disputes arising in connection therewith, but perhaps sufficient has been given to serve as an outline of the events and procedures which resulted in the establishment of the New England states in their present areas and shapes.