USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > History of grants under the great Council for New England: a lecture of a course by members of the Massachusetts Historical Society, delivered before the Lowell Institute, Jan. 15, 1869 > Part 3
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9th, The well-known Pemaquid patent of twelve thousand acres, Feb. : 29, 1632, to be land "not lately granted, settled, and inhabited by any English."
1 Willis, in Hist. of Portland.
? This is added from the Council Records.
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All writers, until recently, have called the grant of Aug. 10, 1622, the Laconia grant. It was not till a copy of the grant of August, 1622, was obtained from England, by the Maine His- torical Society, for publication in 1863, that the error became apparent. The real Laconia grant was dated Nov. 17, 1629, and conveyed to Gorges and Mason "all those lands and coun- tries bordering upon the great lake, or lakes and rivers known by the name of the River and Lake, or Rivers and Lakes of the Iroquois," meaning thereby Lake Champlain. The final and effective grant of the Province of Maine was to Gorges, directly from the King, April 3, 1639, when the Council for New England had ceased to exist.
The heirs of Gorges and Mason, after vain efforts to sustain their title to Maine and New Hampshire, ultimately surrendered their claims for a moderate consideration ; while the minor tracts, in process of time, came to be defined and adjusted by legis- lative and judicial interference.
It may be said, with probable truth, that, but for the success of Massachusetts, all other grants or patents from the Council would have come to nought; and that, on one side the French, and on the other the Dutch, or else the original natives, would have become possessed of all New England. It was so as- serted when Massachusetts was summoned to show cause why its charter should not be revoked.
Yet the charter of the Massachusetts Company gave the death blow to the Council for New England. In connection with the litigious attacks of the Virginia Company, who desired to break up the monopoly of the fisheries, and the protest of the French ambassador, it is assigned, by themselves, as the principal cause of the surrender of their charter. They complained that their own grant to this company had been unfairly obtained and unreason- ably enlarged, absorbing the tract of Robert Gorges, and riding over the heads of all those lords who had portions assigned them in the King's presence; that its members wholly excluded them- selves from the government of the Council, and made themselves a free people, " whereby they did rend in pieces the first foun- dation of the building." On account of these troubles, and upon these considerations, they resolved to surrender their own patent to the King.
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The political purpose of the founders of Massachusetts, and its friends in England, when clearly understood, will be seen to shed a new light upon many obscure points of our own and also of English history.
It is curious to observe, among the men who intended to come to New England, Pym, Hampden, Sir Arthur Hazierig, and Oliver Cromwell. It is instructive to notice, that it was the Earl of Warwick who managed to obtain the patent for the Massachusetts Company, as Gorges relates; that it was the same earl who, on his own responsibility, conveyed Connecticut to Lord Say and Sele, Lord Rich, Charles Fiennes, John Pym, John Hampden, Herbert Pelham, and others; and then to re- mark that, in the revolution which soon took place in England, the Earl of Warwick, Lord Say and Sele, and Lord Mandeville, the son-in-law of Warwick, are designated by Clarendon as chief managers among the Peers; while in the House of Commons, Pym, Hampden, Sir Harry Vane, and Nathaniel Fiennes, brother of Charles, were principal leaders. From these, and many other coincidences, it looks as if the revolution at home was only a carrying out and extending of the political experiment which it had first been their intention to try in New England. And the impression is strengthened, when we learn that members of the original Massachusetts Company took a prominent part in all the public movements of the revolutionary party, - in Parlia- ment, in the Army, in the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, and among the Judges appointed for the trial of the King. It is not strange that the lesser purpose, and the more limited inten- tion, should have been forgotten or obscured, amid the exciting events of the grander and more comprehensive undertaking.1
A more particular account of the grants made or proposed by the Council, which would have been tedious in a lecture before a general audience, is given in a supplement.
1 Dr. Palfrey (Hist. of N. E., vol. i. p. 308) refers to the probable purpose of a renovated England in America entertained by the Puritan leaders, in view of the clouds that were gathering over the political prospects at home ; and quotes a remark of Burke, to whom the same reflection had occurred. See also Hist. of N. E., vol. i. p. 390, n.
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HISTORY OF THE GRANTS UNDER THE
SUPPLEMENT.
EVERY one at all familiar with the grants from the Council for New Eng- land must be aware that their history would properly fill the pages of a large volume. All that a single lecture can accomplish, even with the aid of a supplement, is to take the .place of an introductory chapter, giving some account of the subject-matter, and an abstract of the most important facts and con- clusions. It is believed that the list of grants here presented is more full and more correct than any before attempted; but in a case where our most careful historians have been led into remarkable errors, it would be unreasonable to demand absolute accuracy or completeness. The patience required for the selection and verification of the particulars now brought together, the reader will hardly be able to appreciate.
SUMMARY OF GRANTS FROM THE GREAT COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND.
No. 1. - The first grant from the Council, of which there is any record, was taken out in the name of John Peirce, citizen and clothworker of London, and his associates, June 1, 1621, for the benefit of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. It allowed one hundred acres to each planter within seven years, free liberty to fish on the coast of New England, and fifteen hundred aeres for public uses. After seven years, a rent of two shillings for every one hundred aeres to be paid annually. The lands having been properly surveyed and set out by metes and bounds at the charge of the grantees, upon reasonable request within seven years they are to be confirmed by deed, and letters of incorporation granted, with liberty to make laws and constitutions of government. In the mean time, the undertakers and planters are authorized to establish such laws and ordi- nances, and appoint such officers, as they shall by most voices agree upon. This patent was first printed from the original manuscript, with an introduction and notes, by Charles Deane, Esq., in 1854. The land was to be taken any- where not within ten miles of land already inhabited, or located by authority of the Council, unless it be on the opposite side of some river.
No. 2. - 1622, March 9. Captain John Mason's " Mariana." The head- land " known by the name of Tragabigsenda, or Cape Anne, with the north, south, and east shores thereof," from Naumkeag River, to a river north-west- ward from the Cape (the Merrimack), then up that river to its head, thence across to the head of the other river; with all the islands within three miles of the shore. Hubbard, Hist. of N. E., pp. 614-16.
No. 3. - 1622, April 20. To John Peirce. This was an attempt of Peirce to surrender the indenture of June 1, 1621, and take a deed of the lands to himself, his heirs, associates, and assigns. When it was ascertained that his associates were not privy to this movement, he was compelled to agree to
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submit the matter to the authority and pleasure of the Council. See Council Records, in Proceedings of American Antiquarian Society of April, 1867.
No. 4. - 1622, May 31. In the Records of the Council of this date, it is stated, that " order is given for patents to be drawn for the Earl of Warwick, and his associates, the Lord Gorges, Sir Robert Mansell, Sir Ferdinando Gorges." Dr. Palfrey regards this order as referring to a division of the country, from the Bay of Fundy to Narraganset Bay, among twenty as- sociates, in which the region about Cape Ann fell to Lord Sheffield, who sold a patent for it to the New-Plymouth people. Captain John Smith, in his "Generall Historie," published in 1624, says that New England was " engrossed by twenty patentees who divided my map into twenty parts, and cast lots for their shares." Mr. Thornton, in his interesting work on Cape Ann, has a map from Purchas representing this division, and a fac-simile of the patent from Lord Sheffield above mentioned. There may have been such a division suggested when Captain Smith wrote, and Purchas, writing at the same date, may have prepared the map to correspond with that expectation. The above order from the Records of the Council seems, however, to be limited in its applica- tion to the Earl of Warwick, and three associates ; and there is no account of such a division as the map exhibits in the Records, as we have them, or in the "Relation of the President and Couneil," or in the " Briefe Narration " of Gorges, or in the act of the Resignation of the Charter, where it would naturally appear. The division referred to by Gorges in his " Briefe Narration," and which is described in the proceedings for the surrender of the charter, is a very different one; and quite inconsistent with that exhibited by the map. It is not improbable that the distribution mentioned by Smith, may be alluded to in the agreement for the division, Feb. 3, 1634-5, thus : “ Forasmuch as . .. in the 8th (? 18th) year of the reign of King James, of blessed memory, in whose presence lots were drawn for settling of divers and sundry divisions of land, on the sea-coast of the said country, upon most of us, which hitherto have never been confirmed in the said lands so allotted, and to the intent that every one of us according to equity, and in some reasonable manner answerable to his adventures or other interest, may enjoy a proportion of the said country to be immediately holden of his Majesty, we therefore," &e. The deed from Lord Sheffield, dated Jan. 1, 1623-4, is in direet conflict with the grant from the Council to Mason, Maf 9, 1622. (See above, No. 2.) Lord }, Sheffield's conveyance of Cape Ann, like that of Connecticut by the Earl of Warwick, was probably based upon a proposed . division that was never legally completed. See note at the end of this Supplement.
No. 5. - 1622, Aug. 10. By indenture to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain John Mason, " All that part of the mainland in New England lying upon the sea-coast, betwixt the rivers of Merrimack and Sagadahoc, and to the furthest heads of the said rivers, and so forwards up into the land westward, until threeseore miles be finished from the first entrance of the aforesaid rivers, and half way over; that is to say, to the midst of the said two rivers," "to- gether with all the islands and islets within five leagues' distance of the premises," which, it is stated, the grantees with the consent of the President and Couneil intend to name " The Province of Maine."
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HISTORY OF THE GRANTS UNDER THE
The error of Dr. Belknap in supposing this to be the Lac mia grant, has been repeated by historians to the present time. Mr. Deane, who saw the true Laconia deed in the Record Office in London, two years ago, gives the correct statement in the Report of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society, Oct. 21, 1868. The grant of Aug. 10, 1622, is given in full in the Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, edited by Dr. Bouton (Concord, 1867), who also makes the correction. Hutchinson, Hist., vol. i. p. 282, ed. of 1795, says this grant " did not appear to have been signed, sealed, or witnessed by any order of the Council." See Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, p. 28, note. For an interesting opinion of Sir William Jones, the King's Attorney-General, in 1679, on the validity of the several grants to Mason, on the absence of any right in the Council for New England to confer powers of government, and on the requirement of their charter that their grants should appear to be the acts of a majority of the Council present at a lawful meeting, see Hubbard's Hist. of N. E., pp. 616-621.
No. 6 .- 1622, Nov. 16. The Council Records speak of Mr. Thompson's patent as "this day signed." In the Appendix to the memorial volume of the Maine Historical Society, is a copy of an ancient, but imperfect list of New- England patents, from the Record Office, London, in which the first named is " a patent to David Thompson, M. Jobe, M. Sherwood, of Plimouth, for a pt. of Piscattowa River." Whatever Thompson's grant may have been, it came to nothing. He was a Scotchman, apparently in the service of the Gorges' family, and lived at one time on the Piscataqua River; and at another, on " Thompson's Island," in Boston Harbor.
No. 7. - 1622. Thomas Weston was supposed to have a patent of land at Wessagusset (Weymouth, Mass.). Bradford, p. 122. " Weston's patent is not extant, and little is known respecting it." Deane, in Bradford; p. 124, note.
No. 8. - 1622, Dec. 30. To Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando, " All that part of the mainland commonly called Messachusiac, on the north-east side of the Bay known by the name of Massachuset, together with all the shores along the sea for ten English miles in a strait line towards the north-east, and thirty miles into the mainland through all the breadth aforesaid," including the islands, within three miles of any part of said land, not before granted. The grant is given at length in the " Briefe Narration." chap. xxiii. Its tenure is by " the sword," per Gladium Comitatus. When Robert Gorges came over, he located himself at Wessagusset, which was not within his grant. Among the manuscript records of Massachusetts is a memorandmu to the effect, that, Robert Gorges having died without issue, the land descended to his eldest brother, John, who conveyed it to Sir William Brereton, Jan. 10, 1628. Brereton died, leaving a son and a daughter. The son died, and the daughter married Edmund Lenthall ; and their only daughter and heir married Mr. Levett, of the Inner Temple, who claimed the land in right of his wife. See note to the " Briefe Narration " of Gorges, in Coll. of Me. Hist. Soc., vol. ii. p. 46.
No. 9. - 1623. To Ferdinando Gorges, grandson of Sir Ferdinando, and his associates, among whom were " Walter Norton, Lieutenant- Colonel Thomas Coppyn, Esq., Samuel Maverick, Esq., Thomas Graves, Gent. (an engineer), Raphe Glover, merchant, William Jeffryes, Gent., John Busley,
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Gent., Joel Woolsey, Gent., all of New England." The date of 1623 is derived from the " Briefe Narration," chap. xxv., where Gorges says his grand- son, and some of his associates, hastened to take possession at the time, carry- ing with them their families ; but according to the Council Records, the date of sealing the patent was Dec. 2, 1631. It was renewed March 2, 1632, with some change in the associates, and the former patent cancelled. The grant was first, of one hundred acres to each person transported within seven years, if he remained three years ; second, of twelve thousand more, to the associates, on the east side of the river Agamenticus, on the coast three miles, and into the . land so far as to contain twelve thousand acres, and one hundred acres more for each person ; third, to F. Gorges himself, besides the above, twelve thousand acres on the opposite or western side of the river along the coast westerly to the land appropriated to the plantation at Pascataquaek (Portsmouth), and so along the river Agamenticus, and the bounds of Pascataquack, into the mainland so far as to contain twelve thousand acres ; with all the islands within three leagues into the ocean. In consideration that they have undertaken to build a town. Two shillings to be paid yearly for every one hundred acres of arable land after seven years. This description is from the Records of the Council, in Proceedings of the American Society of April, 1867. See also respecting this grant, Coll. of Me. Hist. Soc., vol. ii. pp. 49, 50, note. At a meeting of the Council, March 22, 1637 (after the surrender of their charter), it is stated that this grant was renewed to Edward Godfrey and others, and " this day the seal of the com- pany was set thereunto."
No. 10. - 1628. To the Plymouth people, of lands on the Kennebec. Renewed and enlarged the next year. Bradford, p. 232.
No. 11. - The Massachusetts patent of March 19, 1628, made into a Royal charter, March 4, 1629. Dr. Palfrey expresses an opinion, that the patentees among whom the coast of New England had been partitioned six years before surrendered their claims, founded on the following record of the Massa- chusetts Company : "Sept. 29, 1629. - It is thought fit, and ordered, that the secretary shall write out a copy of the former grant to the Earl of Warwick and others, which was by them resigned to this company, to be presented to his lordship."
The patent of the Massachusetts Company from the New-England Council is not extant; and there is some mystery attending the manner of its procure- ment, as well as about its original extent. Sir F. Gorges says, that, on the request of the Earl of Warwick, he consented to a grant that should not be prejudicial to the interests of his son Robert. In the art of resignation of their charter by the Council, they say, that the Massachusetts Company, "present- ing the names of honest and religious men, easily obtained their first desires ; but those being onee gotten, they used other means to advance themselves a step beyond their first proportions to a second grant, surreptitiously gotten, of other lands also, justly passed unto Captain Robert Gorges long before." Robert Mason, petitioning the King, in 1676, for possession of the lands granted to his grandfather, declares that the Massachusetts Company " did surrep- titiously, and unknown to the said Council, get the seal of the said Council affixed to a grant of certain lands ; " and did, by their subtile practices, get a
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HISTORY OF THE GRANTS UNDER THE
confirmation under the great seal of England. In their answer to this petition, the Massachusetts authorities deny the charge, no doubt with sincerity ; but all circumstances leave an impression on the mind that, by the influence, perhaps by the management, of the Earl of Warwick, advantages were gained, which many, if not most, of the Council would have objected to. By the favor of Warwick, the Plymouth people obtained their lands on the Kennebee; and the patent of Connecticut was made in his own name, by what authority does not sufficiently appear. These facts may explain the dissatisfaction which arose be- tween the Council and Warwick, their president, and the efforts of the Council to get the seal out of his possession. He seems not to have cared for personal proprietorship, but to have desired to give his Puritan friends the advantage of his official position and influence.
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No. 12. - 1629, Nov. 7. By indenture, to Captain John Mason, part of the same territory which was conveyed by a similar deed to Gorges and Mason, jointly, Aug. 10, 1622. The difference being, that instead of extending from the middle of the Merrimack River to the middle of the Sagadahoc, on the coast, and back into the interior sixty miles between those limits, this grant extends no farther than the middle of the Piscataqua River, but the same distance into the interior between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua, including also islands within five leagues of the shore ; " which the said Captain John Mason, with the consent of the President and Council, intends to name New Hampshire." In the deed to Gorges and Mason, it was proposed to call the whole territory the Province of Maine. The form and general phraseology of the two deeds are alike. If the first instrument was valid, this one, of necessity, could be of no effect. See above, No. 5; Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, pp. 21 and 28, note; Hazard, vol. i. p. 289.
No. 13. - 1629, Nov. 17. This is the true Laconia grant, which, by a mistake, originating doubtless in a misprint, has sometimes had the date Nov. 27, instead of Nov. 17, assigned to it. There is a copy of it in the office of the Secretary of State of Massachusetts. It embraces, in substance, the lands bordering upon the great lake (Champlain), or lakes and rivers commonly known by the name of the river and lake, or rivers and lakes, of the Iroquois ; together with those lakes and rivers, and the land within ten miles of any part of them on the south or east, and from the west end or sides so far to the west as shall extend half-way into the next great lake to the westward; thence northward into the north side of the main river running from the great western lakes into the river of Canada, including all islands within the precincts.
The nullity of this grant is shown by the fact, that so many careful historians have confounded it with that of Aug. 10, 1622, another imperfect and ineffectual instrument. See N. II. Provincial Papers, vol. i. pp. 28 and 38. Hubbard, Hist. of N. E., chap. xxxi., says, that after three years of fruitless endeavors for the more full discovery of " an imaginary Province called Laconia," the agents of Gorges returned to England with a " non est inventa Provincia."
No. 14. - 1629, o.s., Jan. 13. The last Plymouth patent, to William Brad- ford and his associates, in consideration that they have lived nine years in New England, and planted a town at their own cost, and are able to relieve new planters : All that part of New England between the middle of Cohasset River
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and the middle of Narraganset River, and up from the mouths of those rivers in a strait line into the mainland as far as the utmost limits of the country called " Pokenacutt, alias Sowamsett; " and bounded on the east by the ocean, without including islands on the coast. And as the grantees have no con- venient place for trading or fishing within their own precincts, there is also conveyed to them all that tract of land, between, or extending from, the utmost limits of Cobbisconte, which adjoins the river Kennebec, towards the western ocean, and a place called the Falls at Nequamkike; and the space of fifteen miles on each side of the river Kennebec, and all the said river Kennebec that lies within the said limits and bounds, eastward, westward, northward, or southward, last above mentioned. The patent gave a right of passage to and from the ocean, and the right of fishing on the neighboring shores, not inhabited or otherwise disposed of, and also privileges of administration. It appears to have no other signature than that of the Earl of Warwick.
The Plymouth people tried in vain to procure a charter from the Crown, with powers of government. They strengthened their rights in Maine by deeds from the Indians, and endeavored to establish settlements; but tired of the vexation which that property gave them, they sold their entire interest, in 1661, to four persons, for four hundred pounds. In 1753, the then owners became a cor- poration, by the name of " the Proprietors of the Kennebec Purchase ; " and, after much controversy and litigation, the obscure boundaries were ultimately adjusted. See Gardiner's " Hist. of the Kennebec Purchase," in Coll. of Maine Hist. Society, vol. ii. The patent is in Hazard, vol. i. pp. 298-303.
No. 15. - 1630, Feb. 12. At this date, two deeds were issued of the land between Cape Elizabeth and Cape Porpoise in Maine, each of four miles along the coast, and eight miles into the mainland ; one on the north side of the Saco River to Thomas Lewis and Richard Bonython, the other on the south side of the Saco River to John Oldham and Richard Vines. From these grants have sprung the two towns of Saco and Biddeford, retaining nearly the same limits. Hist. of Saco and Biddeford, by George Folsom.
No. 16. - 1630, March 13. The Muscongus grant, afterwards known as the Waldo patent. The abstract of this grant, in Hazard, Coll. vol. i. pp. 304, 305. taken from the Maine Records, is unintelligible. Williamson, Hist. of Me. vol. i. p. 240, describes it as extending from the seaboard, between the rivers Penobscot and Muscongus, to an unsurveyed line running east and west so far north as would, without interfering with any other patent, embrace a territory equal to thirty miles square ; and adds, in a note, that the north line, as since settled, is in the south line of Hampden, Newbury, and Dixmont. The grant was to John Beauchamp and Thomas Leverett, of England. Leverett is said to have succeeded to the property on the death of Beauchamp. John Leverett, President of Harvard College, as sole heir of his grandfather, became the owner in 1715. By the admission of partners, a company was formed, consisting of thirty proprietors, who first employed Brigadier-General Sammel Waldo as agent, and ultimately assigned to him the largest interest in the patent. Coll. of Me. Hist. Society, vol. vi. art. xv.
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