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Immediately after the close of King Philip's war Massa- chusetts became involved in the momentous conflict with the home government. Again its jurisdiction over Maine and New Hampshire was challenged. The province of Maine was,
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indeed, saved by the purchase of the rights of the heirs of Gorges, but New Hampshire was finally severed, and was set apart in 1679 as a royal province.
RELATIONS WITH ACADIA (1676-1681)
This conflict with England forced Massachusetts to con- sider more carefully its relations with the French of Acadia. By the French government Acadia had been much neglected. Its sparse population of feudal seigneurs with their depend- ents lived almost entirely by the fur trade. Intercourse with France was spasmodic; supplies and many of the necessities of life were secured from the Boston traders, who frequented the coast, trading with the French and Indians, taking coal from Cape Breton, and otherwise conducting themselves as if Acadia were still English. The fisheries of the Acadian banks were almost exclusively in the hands of the New England fish- ermen. French officials were forced to recognize that this economic dependence on an English colony was essential so long as there was no regular commerce between Acadia and France. Even had the government felt otherwise, the lawless seigneurs were hard to control; and many a Governor of Acadia was glad to share in the profits of the trade. On the other hand, such a connection violated every principle of the old colonial system, and the French government was ready to welcome any chance of breaking it.
From the point of view of Massachusetts, relations with Acadia were satisfactory enough. The only complaint Gov- ernor Bradstreet had to make of the French in his report to the Lords of Trade in 1680 was that they attempted to col- lect a license fee for the privilege of fishing on the Acadian coast, a practice which had been originated, so they asserted, by Temple. For the rest, Bradstreet spoke of the French in a tone almost of contempt, reporting that they were few and weak, and that relations with them were generally friendly.
To Frontenac, who was at this time Governor of New France, the situation was by no means satisfactory. From time to time he protested at the activities of the New England traders and fishermen on the coast of Acadia; but his earlier protests were unheeded. As the conflict with the home gov-
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ernment became more intense, however, it seems to have oc- curred to the rulers of the colony that it would be well to establish more friendly relations with the French, and thus at least assure the colony of an uninterrupted enjoyment of the fisheries, which were so essential to its prosperity. Fol- lowing one of Frontenac's protests, therefore, the government in 1682 sent John Nelson, nephew and heir of Temple, and the leading trader with Acadia, to Quebec to make an agree- ment with the French governor.
The outcome of these negotiations was that the General Court passed a law discountenancing the irregularities com- plained of by Frontenac; and that tacit acknowledgment was made of the right of the French to impose a license on Massa- chusetts fishermen by sanctioning an arrangement whereby the latter could secure a license either from the Governor of Aca- dia or from Nelson at Boston. It speaks well for both the French and English authorities that they thus recognized that their interests were better served by an accommodation than by a series of protests and reprisals. In fact, the arrangement was so satisfactory to the French that Frontenac's successor, La Barre, continued it, and even sought to turn it into a polit- ical entente by inviting the Massachusetts governor to join him in an attack upon the Iroquois.
REVIVAL OF ACADIAN TROUBLES (1682-1686)
Unfortunately these friendly relations were soon disturbed by the action of the French government, which had never sanctioned this rapprochement. In 1682 it chartered a com- pany, the leading spirit in which was one Bergier, to develop the coast fisheries of Acadia. On his arrival in Acadia Ber- gier found the local authorities quite uninterested in a scheme which threatened to endanger good relations with Boston; and not until he had secured the removal of the Governor and his own appointment as acting Governor was he able to prose- cute his enterprise. Then, in the summer of 1684, he seized eight New England fishing vessels, six of which were found to have no license. Paralyzed by the hopeless imminent struggle to retain the charter, the Massachusetts government did noth- ing; but the friendly relations thus interrupted were never resumed, and the French government pushed on its schemes of freeing Acadia from its economic dependence upon Boston.
At this same time action taken by the Duke of York's gov-
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ernor at Pemaquid gave the French on their side a grievance. More than any other one man Thomas Dongan of New York must be held responsible for the rapid germination of the seeds of conflict between the English and French in America. Ap- pointed Governor in 1683 of the Duke's possessions in place of Andros, he showed from the outset a determination to as- sert the rights of his master to the full. One of his first acts was to order the French living west of the St. Croix to ac- knowledge English rule or leave the country; and to stipulate that all the trade of the Duke's Province must enter and clear at the port of Pemaquid.
The principal Frenchman to be affected by these orders was the Baron Vincent de St. Castin. Establishing himself in 1671 at the old trading post of Penobscot, now called by the French Pentagoët, he had speedily acquired a large influence over the Penobscot Abnaki, the daughter of whose war-chief he ulti- mately married. St. Castin had long traded exclusively with the English, chiefly with Nelson, and paid no attention what- soever to the French governor of Acadia. These orders of Dongan would disturb his trade with the Boston traders and might drive him into the arms of the French. Nelson, whose commercial interests were threatened, prophecied that Indian disturbances also would result.
For some time Dongan seems not to have followed up his orders, but in 1686 his agents seized near Pentagoët a cargo of wine, oil and brandy, consigned by Nelson and other merchants to St. Castin, on the ground, apparently, that it had not been entered at Pemaquid. Alarmed at this action, President Dud- ley and the Council, who were in control pending the arrival of Andros, appealed to the home government, suggesting the necessity of an agreement with the French about the right to trade and fish on the coast of Acadia, for they feared French reprisals.
FRENCH RELATIONS IN ANDROS PERIOD (1684-1689)
The control of affairs, after the quashing of the charter in 1684, was rapidly passing out of the hands of Massachu- setts. It is true that the Council, which ruled under Dudley and Andros, was made up largely of Massachusetts men, many of whom had served on the old Council before the loss of the charter; but more and more the home government was being forced to intervene in American affairs, and its policy was
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always faithfully carried out by Andros. Indeed at this very time the English government negotiated with France the Treaty of Neutrality (November 6-16, 1686), which sought to quiet the colonial rivalry of the two nations by forbidding the subjects of either to trade or fish within the territories or waters of the other. Had this been enforced it would have broken up the trade between Boston and Acadia, and would, as Randolph pointed out, have gone far to destroy the New England fishery.
The French government was in fact determined to break the hold of Boston upon Acadia. A new governor, Meneval, was sent to Acadia in 1687 with soldiers and a frigate, and signalized his arrival by seizing two New England fishing vessels.
Andros was now in control of his Dominion of New Eng- land. While he protested at the seizure of the fishing vessels, he also continued Dongan's policy toward the French living west of the St. Croix. In 1687 they were warned to submit to English jurisdiction, and in 1688 Andros paid a visit to the region, during which he seized all the movable property of St. Castin, to be held at Pemaquid until the latter should recognize his authority. The result was to drive St. Castin into the arms of the French, and to turn him from a neutral trader into a strong supporter of the anti-English policy of the French court.
The net result of these mutually irritating policies was seri- ously to damage the interests of Massachusetts, which was forced to stand by helpless while others took action detrimental to it. The trade between Boston and Acadia was broken up. Under the instigation of the Jesuits and St. Castin the In- dians were becoming restive; and the fisheries were con- stantly threatened and annoyed. The fishermen did indeed take matters into their own hands, and by a series of piratical attacks destroyed Bergier's fishing enterprise, but the situation was such that it could be alleviated only by open war or by a change of policy.
RELATIONS WITH NEW YORK AND THE IROQUOIS (1680-1689)
At the same time Massachusetts was being drawn into a hostile attitude towards the French by the policy of New York
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and the Iroquois. The latter had been practically at war with the French since 1681; and Dongan, after his arrival, sup- ported them vigorously in every way short of giving them actual assistance. Threatened by a French attack the Iroquois sought the friendship of the English, and in 1684, at a great intercolonial congress held at Albany, signed a treaty of alli- ance with Massachusetts, Maryland and Virginia. Bad as Anglo-French relations were in the region of Acadia, they were much worse on the New York frontier, for the combina- tion of the Iroquois and New York threatened the very exist- ence of New France. The English government took cognizance of the situation by authorizing Dongan to call on other govern- ments for assistance, and by ordering Andros to assist Dongan in case of need. Further to strengthen the northern colonies against the French, James II in the spring of 1688 added New York and the Jerseys to the Dominion of New England.
By this time, despite the signing in December, 1687, of a treaty for the preservation of peace in America, the govern- ments of England and France were not far from war. Indeed war may be said to have begun in America in 1688 by a raid of Canadian Indians upon Northfield, and by the outbreak of some of the Abnaki tribes of Maine.
To the other causes of hostility was added, on the part of Massachusetts, the ever-increasing resentment at the arbitrary government of the Catholic King James, believed to be in league with Louis XIV to destroy Protestantism and free government on both sides of the Atlantic. Thus by 1689 both the commercial interests of the colony and its religious feelings were propelling it towards war with the French. A spectre had already taken shape, which was to haunt New England for three quarters of a century, that of a Catholic power in America dispatching scalping parties against its frontier villages, harassing its fisheries and its commerce, pre- venting a normal and healthy territorial expansion, and threat- ening the existence of that religion which was still the inspira- tion and rallying cry of the great majority of its people.
By 1689 the days of isolation were over. The disappearance of the Dominion of New England in 1689 did not in reality much change the situation. North America was now arrayed in two hostile camps: on the one side the French with their
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Abnaki and Algonquin allies; on the other New York, the Iroquois, and New England. Behind each combination, more and more directing its policy, stood the respective home gov- ernments. The Puritan Commonwealth had become an im- perial province ; its policy must conform henceforth more and more to that of the metropolis.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
[See also the bibliographies following Chapters vii (Winthrop) ; viii (Sister Settlements) ; xv (Economic) ; xvi (Trade and Shipping) ; and the General Bibliography at the end of Volume V.]
ADAMS, James Truslow .- The Founding of New England (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1921) .- Interesting and unconventional treatment of certain episodes.
ALLABEN, A. E .- "La Tour and Acadia in the Suffolk Deeds" (National Magazine, XII, 422-436) .- Valuable account of the relations of La Tour with the Boston merchants.
BARNES, Viola Florence .- The Dominion of New England (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1923) .- The best acount of the external relations of Massachusetts during the Andros period; unduly laudatory of Andros.
BRODHEAD, John Romeyn .- History of the State of New York (2 vols. N. Y., 1859, 1871) .- The standard history of New York to 1691. Useful for the relations of Massachusetts with that province during the Dutch and early English periods.
BUFFINTON, Arthur H .- "New England and the Western Fur Trade" (Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Publications, XVIII, 160-192 1916) .- An account of the efforts of the Massachusetts merchants to break the Dutch control of the fur trade of the Hudson and Delaware.
HUBBARD, William .- General History of New England (2d ed., Boston, 1848) .- Good narrative by a contemporary, based largely on Win- throp for the early period.
HUTCHINSON, Thomas .- History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay From 1628, until 1774 (3 vols. 4th ed., London, 1778) .- Best gen- eral narrative, based on Hutchinson's well-known collection of docu- ments.
LAUVRIÈRE, Émile .- La Tragédie d'un Peuple: Histoire du Peuple Acadien de ses Origines à nos Jours (2 vols. Paris, 1922 .- The most recent history of Acadia, written by a French scholar. Marred by a marked anti-English bias.
PALFREY, John Gorham .- History of New England (5 vols. Boston, Little Brown, 1858-1890) .- Contains an account of the external re- lations of Massachusetts in Volumes I-III, passim.
PARKMAN, Francis .- The Jesuits in North America, and the Old Regime in Canada (Frontenac ed., Boston, Little Brown, 1907) .- Vol. I, chap- ter on negotiations of 1650-1651; Vol. II, three chapters on La Tour and D'Aulnay.
TUTTLE, Charles Wesley .- Historical Papers (Boston, University Press, 1889) .- Contains a valuable essay, with appended documents, on the Dutch Conquest of Acadia (1674).
WEAVER, S. Roy .- "The First Negotiations for Reciprocity in North America" (Journal of Political Economy, XIX 411-415) .- A valu- able study of the negotiations of 1650-1651.
WILLIAMSON, William D .- History of the State of Maine (2 vols. Hallowell, 1832) .- Still the most useful account of the history of Maine.
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WINSOR, Justin, editor .- Memorial History of Boston (4 vols. Boston, 1885-1886) .- Vol. I, chapter vii, by Charles C. Smith, is a careful narrative on "Boston and the Neighboring Jurisdictions".
WINTHROP, John .- Journal [Edited by James K. Hosmer] (2 vols., N. Y., Scribners, 1908) .- Valuable for the external relations of Massachusettss from 1630 to 1649, especially La Tour-D'Aulnay episode.
CHAPTER XIX
EXPANSION AND KING PHILIP'S WAR (1630-1689)
BY JOHN GOULD CURTIS
Fellow of the American Geographical Society
INTERIOR DEVELOPMENT
A large proportion of the shore towns of New England were settled directly from England, and became in turn the "mother towns" of the younger settlements which pushed the frontier into the forest and gradually west- ward. Like stones cast into a pond, each of these original settlements sent out its waves of venturesome pioneers who sought the virgin acres of the upland. As with skip- ping stones, the force and travel of those waves depended not alone on the size of their originating source, but also in the vigor of the initiative force.
At the outset it must be remembered that the frontier was not sharply defined at any time after the growth of settlements began. It was not a thing to be described with the definiteness of a battle line or a surveyable boun- dary. The English settlements penetrated far into un- questionably Indian territory, or were sometimes wholly surrounded by Indian lands. Some Indian communities lived entirely within the white settlements.
This state of affairs was an expression of the spirit of the colonists, by which they were led to seek out promis- ing agricultural regions to which men might move who valued the speculative chance of self-advancement above the risks and hardships of wilderness life. The common procedure was for a group to organize themselves with the purpose of setting up a new "plantation," and then to
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obtain the land they had selected by the dual formality of purchase from the Indians who ranged the district, and grant from the General Court. The Court denied recogni- tion to titles with respect to which Indian claims had not been satisfied, and intended that expansion of this sort should be of a pacific and neighborly sort.
We can best picture the situation by examining its growth, tracing the development of secondary and terti- ary towns that were settled out of the original ones, and appreciating thus the interpenetration of English and In- dian lands, and the systematic but irregular westward march of the colonist families.
EARLIEST MOTHER TOWNS (1620-1628)
By mother towns are meant those settlements which were made by emigrants from the Old World, and from which, after they had grown a little, eager pioneers went' out to claim additional lands from the aborigines or re- claim them from the forest. Excluding Dover and Ports- mouth in what is now New Hampshire, in 1628 eight plan- tations were in existence along the New England coast.
(1) Of these the first to be established and the one to enjoy the widest fame in history was of course Plym- outh, whither the Pilgrims came in 1620. (2) This earli- est of the permanent colonies was quickly followed by a temporary neighbor. Thomas Weston, a London merch- ant, was impressed with the possibility of turning his business abilities to profit through colonial enterprise, and sent over in 1622 a party to settle a plantation at Wessagusset, near the present Wollaston. Mismanage- ment resulted in failure. (3) Two years later emigrants from Weymouth, England, led by Rev. William Morrill and Capt. Robert Gorges, made a settlement north of Plymouth to which they gave the name of their English home; and it remains Weymouth to this day. (4) Like- wise, in 1624, the Dorchester (England) Company com- menced a fishing and planting station on the present site of Gloucester. In 1626 most of the people moved to Salem, but a few years afterward an ejected Welsh min- ister named Blynman led some 50 emigrants in the estab-
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lishment of a permanent settlement. (5) Gloucester was incorporated as a "fishing plantation" in 1639, and the General Court made it a town in 1642. (6) The year 1625 saw the commencement of the present city of Quincy to whose site came a party under one Capt. Wol- laston, for whom the settlement was named Mount Wol- laston. The captain went the next year to Virginia, and his agent in charge was unable to keep the men from falling into disreputable habits under the leadership of Thomas Morton, once "a kind of petti-fogger" at a London inn. May-pole dancing and the selling of arms to the Indians excited Morton's neighbors at Plymouth, who sent over Capt. Standish to disperse the rioters and make secure their leader for deportation to England. In 1640 the town was incorporated under the name of Brain- tree, but it is now a part of Quincy.
(7) Roger Conant and some associates, who had not made out very well in their attempt to set up a fishing plantation at Cape Ann (now Gloucester), moved in the fall of 1625 to Naumkeag. In 1628 a patent was obtained and Capt. John Endecott came over with about 100 per- sons to carry on the plantation. Additional colonists ar- rived the next year, including four ministers and, piously enough, the name Salem-a Hebrew word meaning peace -was adopted "to signify freedom from civil and re- ligious oppression." (8) Charlestown, first called Mish- awum, was settled in 1628, the oldest town in Middlesex County. A few founders came from Salem in that year, and in 1629 a number of new emigrants came over, hav- ing landed first at Salem.
THE GREAT EMIGRATION (1630-1633)
Earlier chapters have described in detail the largest, most complete and most immediately successful colony up to that time, despatched to New England in 1630. The eleven ships reached Salem June 12, 1630. Some 200 of the newcomers found the prospects so unattractive that they returned to England by the same ships; but the rest at once began to set up a group of villages which quickly developed into permanent towns.
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OTHER DIRECT SETTLEMENTS
Lynn had been settled in 1629 by Francis and Edmund Ingalls, who came from Lincolnshire. It went first by the Indian name of Saugust, but the pastor installed in 1636 came from Lynn Regis, England, and a record of the General Court in 1637 reads "Saugust is called Lin." Later on an offshoot from the town again received the name of Saugus.
Winthrop's party of about 1,500 persons repaired from their first landing at Salem to the shore of Boston harbor where they experienced a devastating winter. This group was responsible for the permanent settling of Charlestown, Boston, Watertown, Dorchester, Roxbury and New-Town, later called Cambridge. Medford was also settled the same year, a few months before Winth- rop's arrival, by another party from England, and was selected by Winthrop for his great farm of Ten Hills.
The rigors of climate, the strictness and the hard con- ditions of life, as reported by the first settlers, for a time slowed up emigration; but after 1632 ten or a dozen ships came in every month during the summer; and over a period of twelve years, from 1630 to 1642, nearly 200 vessels brought emigrants to New England. Winthrop estimated the population of Massachusetts in May, 1634, at 4,000.
OTHER DIRECT SETTLEMENTS (1634-1644)
Early conceptions of limitations of land holdings, coupled with the importance of keeping the settlements fairly compact, tended to limit the population that could be accommodated with convenience in a given town. If the settlers were too many, the outlying lots of some of them must be laid off too far from the village itself to be easily attended. Furthermore, the "old planters" were likely to be reluctant to share their rights of commonage and other public property with newcomers. These, with other considerations, probably helped to influence the colonists who came over in the decade following the Great Emigration, to establish new towns rather than seek places for themselves in the older ones. Of course as the coast towns became trading centers, some of the
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objections to new settlers that arose in agricultural com- munities lost their force.
John Winthrop, Jr., with twelve others made in 1633 the first permanent settlement at Agawam, and the next year it was incorporated as Ipswich. There were evi- dently settlers the same year at Hingham, though the earliest records of the town date from 1635. The pastor and most of the people came from Hingham, County of Norfolk, England.
In 1635 Musketaquid was bought from the Indians and called Concord on account of the peaceable way in which it was obtained. The town was settled mainly by emi- grants direct from England and was incorporated the same year. It was the first town back of tide water and was entirely surrounded by Indian lands.
Taunton and Yarmouth were established in 1637, the first by men from Somersetshire and Devonshire, and mainly from Taunton in England, the second by emi- grants from both England and Wales. At the head of a company from Yorkshire came one Rev. Ezekiel Rogers, who had been a minister at Rowley, England, and settled the town which bears that same name in 1638. Edgar- town, now a part of Massachusetts, was incorporated in 1671 under the government of New York. It was sup- posed to have been settled in 1642 by a company under Thomas Mayhew, but it appears that a dozen English families were already there, having been shipwrecked on their way from England to Virginia. In 1640 was begun the settlement of Reading, then called Lynn Village. Most of the settlers came from England and stopped only briefly in Lynn before moving to this new grant on its outskirts. Settlers from Andover, Hampshire County, England, established a town of the same name in Massa- chusetts, probably in 1643 or 1644.
This seems to be the last town that was founded by emigrants fresh from England. In the years that fol- lowed, the newcomers tended more and more to disperse themselves among the old towns. If the confict between a growing population and the desire for accessible lands grew strong enough, those people who were most ven-
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