USA > Maine > Cumberland County > History of Cumberland Co., Maine > Part 6
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In 1634, Edward Godfrey procured of the Council of Plymouth a grant to himself and associates, Samuel May- erick, William Hooke, and others, of twelve thousand acres of land on the north side of the river Agamentieus.
Oldham was kille 1 by the Indians of Block Island, July 20, 16:6. Winthrop.
t Fols an's Itlit. of Saco and Biddeford.
* Archives of Maine Historical Society.
, Willi-' 11 -t. of Portland.
York Recor.1s. ( Ibid.
## See History of Cape Elizabeth, in this volume.
tt There is a tradition in the Jordan family that the wife of a son of the first Robert Jordan, needling some papers to keep her pastry from burning, took from a chest of papers Trelawny's patent and used it for that purpose, which thus perished, like many other ancient andl valuable manuscripts.
25
CHARTERS AND LAND-GRANTS.
The same year another grant was made of twelve thousand acres on the west side of the river to Ferdinando Gorges, grandson of Sir Ferdinando. Edward Godfrey had settled at Agamenticus, now York, in 1632, two years before his patent was obtained. He was for several years an agent for the Laconia Company at Piscataqua. After he estab- lished himself in Maine his activity and intelligence soon brought him into notice. Sir Ferdinando Gorges appointed him a counselor of his province in 1640; in 1642 he was mayor of Gorgiana. Ile was chosen Governor by the people in the western part of the province in 1649, and was the first in Maine who exercised that office by election. He died about 1661.
We have now touched briefly upon all the grants and settlements made upon the coast of Maine previous to 1634. It will be perceived that the grants were all obtained from the Council of Plymouth, notwithstanding the patent to Gorges and Mason of 1622, which extended from the Mer- rimac to Sagadahoe, and nominally covered the whole ter- ritory. From this circumstance it would be natural to conclude that the patent of 1622 was unexecuted, and that no title passed by it; and it appears by the opinion of Sir William Jones, the attorney-general in 1679, that the " grant was only sealed with the council seal, unwitnessed, no seisin endorsed, nor possession ever given with the grant."* This idea is corroborated by the facts that Gorges was sit- ting at the council board, and was a party to all the subse- quent conveyances which parcelled ont the land within the limits of that patent ; and that both he and Mason received a grant with six or seven others in 1631 of a small tract on both sides of the Piscataqua, which included the im- provements they had previously made there. If the patent of 1622 were valid, it would have been wholly useless to have procured another within the same limits.
The settlements which commenced at Plymouth in 1620 now dotted the whole coast from Cape Cod to the Bay of Fundy; they were indeed few and far between, but an in- tercourse was kept up among them by their common weak- ness and wants, as well as for the purposes of trade. And although Massachusetts was the most powerful of the whole, and from motives of religious zeal, no doubt sincere, dis- countenanced the less strict settlers upon this coast, who on such matters differed from them both in doctrine and prae- tice, she fain would profit by their fish and fur, which enabled her to procure from Europe articles of the first necessity for the infant colony.
John Jocelyn, the traveler, who visited his brother Ilenry at Black Point in 1638, sailed along the coast from Boston to that place in July. Ile says, " Having refreshed myself for a day or two upon Noddle's Island, I crossed the bay in a small boat to Boston, which was then rather a village than a town, there being not above twenty or thirty houses."+ " The 12th day of July I took boat for the eastern parts of the country, and arrived at Black Point, in the province of Maine, which is 150 miles from Boston, the 14th day. The country all along, as I sailed, being no other than a mere wilderness, here and there by the sea-side a few scattered plantations with as few houses."t
$ 1 Hutch., 285 ; Hub., 614.
+ Jocelyn's Voyages, 19. į Ibid., 20.
4
The Council of Plymouth continued their operations until June 7, 1635, when they surrendered their charter to the king. During their existence as a corporation, a period of fourteen years and seven months, they were not inactive. In 1621 they relinquished a large proportion of their patent in favor of Sir William Alexander, and assented to a con- veyance by the king to him of all the territory lying cast of the river St. Croix and south of the St. Lawrence, embracing the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Bruns- wick.
It may not be amiss to recapitulate here in a brief man- ner the various grants of the Plymouth Council within the limits of the State of Maine. They are as follows :
1. 1622, Ang. 10, to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Capt. John Mason, from Merrimae to the Kennebec Rivers.
2. 1626, Nov. G, to the Plymouth adventurers a tract on Kennebec River, which was enlarged in 1628.
3. 1630, Jan. 13, to William Bradford and his asssociates, fifteen miles on each side of the Kennebec River, extend- ing up to Cobbisecontee ; this grant Bradford transferred to the Plymouth adventurers.
4. 1630, Feb. 12, to John Oldham and Richard Vines, four miles by eight miles on the west side of the Saco River at its mouth.
5. 1630, Feb. 12, to Thomas Lewis and Richard Bonighton, four miles by eight, on the east side of Saco River at the mouth.
6. 1630, March 13, to John Beauchamp and Thomas Leverett, ten leagues square, on the west side of Penobscot River, called the Lincoln or Waldo patent.
7. 1630, to John Dy and others the province of Ligonia, or the Plough patent, lying between Cape Porpoise and Cape Elizabeth, and extending forty miles from the coast.
8. 1631, Nov. I, to Thomas Cammock, Black Point, fifteen hundred acres.
9. 1631, Dec. 1, to Robert Trelawny and Moses Good- yeare, a tract between Spurwink River and Casco Bay.
10. 1632, June 6, to Thomas Purchase and George Way, a tract known as Pejepscot, lying between the Ken- nebec and Androscoggin Rivers and Casco Bay, including the present town of Brunswick.
11. 1632, to Robert Aldsworth and Giles Elbridge, a tract on Pemaquid Point.
12. 1634, to Edward Godfrey and others, twelve thou- sand acres on the river Agamenticus.
13. 1634, to Ferdinando Gorges twelve thousand aeres, on the west side of the river Agamenticus.
We take the following quaint description of the settle- ments in Maine in 1670, five years before the first outbreak of Indian hostilities, from " John Jocelyn's Voyages :"§
"Towns there are not many in this province. Kittery, situated not far from Pascataway, is the most populous. Next to that, eastward, is seated by a river near the sea Gorginna, a majoraltie, and the metropolitan of the province. Further to the eastward is the town of Wells. Cape Porpus, eastward of that, where there is a town of the same name, the houses scatteringly built ; all these towns have store of salt and fresh marsh, with arable land, and all well stocked with cattle. Ahont 8 or nine miles to the Eastward of Cape Porpus is Winter Harbour, a noted place for fishers ; here they have many stages. Saco adjoins to this, and hoth make one scattering town of
¿ Jocelyn returned to England in 1671.
20
HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY, MAINE.
large extent, well s'ored with enttle, arable land and marshes, and a saw mill. Six miles to the eastward of Suco, and 40 miles from Giorgina, is seated the town of Black Point, consisting of about 50 dwelling houses, and a magazine, or doyenne, seatteringly built ; they have store of neat and horses, of sheep near upon 7 or son, much arable and marsh, salt and fresh, and a corn mill. To the southward of the Point (upon which are stages for fishermen) lie two small islands; beyond the Point, North eastward runs the river of Spurwink. . . .
" l'our mile - from Black Point, one mile from Sporwink River, east- ward, lyeth Richmond's Island, whose long. is 317. 30" and lat. Ro 31' ; it is 3 miles in circumference, and hath a passable and gravelly ford on the north side, between the main and the sea at low water ; here are found excellent whetstones, and here likewise are stages for fishermen. Nine miles eastward of Black Point lieth seatteringly the town of Cover upon a large bay, stored with cattle, sheep, swing, almin lance of marsh and arable land, a corn-mill or two, with stages for fishermen. Further eastward is the town of Kennchee, seated upon the river. Further yet eastward is Sagadehoek, where there are many houses scattering, and all along stages for fishermen ; these two are stored with cattle and corn lands. . . .
" Twelve miles from Casco Bay, and passable for men and horses, is a lake ellel by the Indians Sebug, on the brink thereof, at one end, is the famous rock shaped like a mouse deer or kell, diaphanous, and called the Moose Rock. Here are found stones like ebrystals and lupis specularis or muscovia glass, both white and purple. . . .
" From Sagadehoek to Nova Scotia is called the Duke of York's province, bere Pemaquid, Montiniens, Mohegan, Capcanaw hagen, where t'apt. Smith fight for whales, Muscataquid, all filled with dwell- ing houses and stages for fishermen, and have plenty of cattle, arable lund, and marshes."
Mr. Jocelyn also in the same book gives the following account of the occupations and character of the ancient in- habitants, page 207 :
" The peuple in the Province of Maine may be divided into magis- trates, husbandmen or planters, and fishermen : of the magistrates some be royalists, the rest perverse spirits, the like are the planters and fishers, of which some be planters and fishers both, others meer fishers.
" Handicraftsmen there are but few, the tumelor or cooper, smiths and carpenters are best welcome amongst them, shopkeepers there are none, being supplied by the Massachusetts merchants with all things they stand in need of. English sboes are sold for 8 or 9 >hils. a pair, worsted stockings of Is. Gd. for 7 and 84, a pair, Douglas, that is sold in England for 1 or 2 and 20 penec an ell, for As. a yard, serges of 2 or An. a yard, for G and 7 shillings.
" They have a custom of taking tobacco, sleeping at noon, sitting long at meals, sometimes four times a day, and now and then drink- ing a dram of the bottle extraordinarily " . They feed generally upon as good Besh, beef, pork, mutton, fowl, and fish as any in the world besides. Their servants, which are for the most part English, will not work under a half a crown a day, when they are out of their time, although it be for to make hny, and for less I do not see how they eun, by reason of the dearness of clothing. If they hire them by the year, they pay them Ifor £15 at the year's end, in corn, eat- tle, and tish ; some of these prove excellent fowlers, bringing in as many as will maintain their master's house, besides the protit that avernes by their feathers.
"The fishermen take yearly upon the coast many hundred kentals of end, hake, haddock, pollock, &e., ke., which they split, salt, and dry at their stages, making three voyages in a year. When they there their fish, which is at the end of every voyage, they separate the best from the worst, which is known when it is clear like a lanthorn horn and withont spots ; the secon I sort they call refuse fish, that is. sneh us is alt burnt, spotted, rotten, and carelessly ordered ; these they put off to the Massachusetts merchants, the merchantable for 20 and 32 realen kental 112 pounds , the refuse for 9 and 10x, the quin- tal. The merchants send the merchantable fish to Lisbon, Bilbo, Bur- desav. Mais es, Talloon, Rochel, Roan, and other cities of France, to the Innarus with claw board and pipe staves, which is there and nt the C'haribs a prime commodity. The refuse fish they put off at the C'harsh Islands, Barbudoes, Anmaies, &c., sho ford their Negros with it.
" To every shallop belong four fishermen, a master or steersman, at
Midshipman, and a foremast man and a shore man, who washes it out of the salt and dries it upon bundles and tends their cookery.
" These often get in one voyage S or £9 a man, but it doth some of them little good, for the merchant to increase his gain by putting off his commodity in the middest of their voyages, and at the end thereof comes in with a walking tavern, a bark laden with the legitimate blond of the rich grape, which they bring from Phial, Madern; Canaries, with brandy, rum, the Barbadoes strong water, and tobacco ; coming a shore he gives them a taster or two, which so charms them, that for no persuasions will they go to sra, although fair and seasonalle weather for 2 or 3 days, nay, sometimes a whole week, till they are wearied with drinking, taking a shore 2 or 3 hhds. of wine and rum to drink when the merchant is gone.
"They often have to run in debt for their necessaries on account of the lavish expense for drink, and are constrained to mortgage their plantations, if they have any, and the merchant, when the time is ex- pored, is sure to turn them out of house and home, seizing their plan- tations aud cattle, poor creatures, to look out for a new habitation in some remote place, where they begin the world again.
"Of the same nature are the people in the Duke's province, who, not long before I left the country, petitioned Mass, to take them into their government."
CHAPTER V.
ESTABLISHMENT OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
Sovereignty not granted by the Original Charter-Right of Govern- ment secured by Gorges-Province of New Somersetshire-First General Court of Maine-Province of Ligonia- Effect of the Civil War in England-Richard Vines-George Cleaves-Alexander Rigby-The Governments of Gorges and Rigby Overthrown-In- dependent Government under Edward Godfrey-Submission to the Authority of Massachusetts.
THE patent granted by James II. to the " Council for the Affairs of New England," Nov. 3, 1620, contained powers of civil government to the council and their successors, but it soon became a question whether these powers were trans- ferable, with a conveyance of any part of the territory within the limits of the grant. This point, it is believed, was never directly decided, although it may be inferred from the practice of some of the patentees that the general impression was adverse to such transfer. The Massachu- setts patentees and Sir Ferdinando Gorges each procured a confirmation of their grants from the king, with power to govern their respective provinces. But with regard to Mason's grant of New Hampshire, which was not confirmed by the king, the two chief justices of England agreed that it conveyed no right of sovereignty, the great Council of Plymouth, under whom he claimed, "having no power to transfer government to any."
The surrender of their charter by the Plymouth Council in June, 1635, prepared the way for the establishment of civil government in the province. On the 25th of April, 1635, a short time before the surrender of their charter, the council had a meeting at Whitehall, in London, at which they prepared a declaration of the causes which in- duced them to take this important step, as follows :
" For as much as we have found by a long experience that the faithful endeavors of some of ns that have sought the plantation of New England, have not been without frequent and inevitable troubles as companions to our un lertakings from our first discovery of that const to the present, by great charges and unnecessary expenses, and also by depriving us of divers of our dear friends and faithful servants employed in that work abroad, whilst ourselves at home were
27
ESTABLISHMENT OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
assaulted with sharp litigious questions, both before the privy council and the parliament, having been presented as a grievance to the com- monwealth. The affections of the multitude were thereby disheart- ened, and so much the more by how much it pleased God about that time to bereave us of the most noble and principal props thereof, as the Duke of Lenox, Marquis of Hamilton, and many other strong stays to the weak building. Then followed the claim of the French ambassador, taking advantage of the divisions of the sea-enast between ourselves, to whom we made a just and satisfactory answer. Never- theless, these crosses did not draw upon us such a disheartened weak- ness as there only remained a careass, in a manner breathless, till the end of the last parliament, when the Massachusetts Company obtained their charter, and afterwards thrust nut the undertakers and tenants of some of the council ; withal riding over the heads of those lords and others that had their portion assigned unto them in their lato majesty's province."
After a further enumeration of grievances they say they found matters " in so desperate a case," by reason of the complaints made against them and the procedure in Massa- chusetts, they saw no remedy for " what was brought to ruin," but for his majesty to take the whole business into his own hands.
" After all these troubles, and upon these considerations, it is cow resolved that the patent shall be surrendered unto his majesty."
In the same instrument they provided for all existing titles made by them, and prayed the king to confirm the grants which they had divided among themselves. These were recorded in a book which accompanied the surrender. In that division the territory now called Maine was dis- tributed to three of the patentees ; Gorges' share extended from the Piscataqua to the Kennebec, or Sagadahoe ; an- other portion was between Sagadahoe and Pemaquid ; the third from the Pemaquid to the St. Croix .* The propri- etors of the two latter divisions are not named, and there appears to be no evidence that any occupation was had of them under this title. The division among the patentees was made by lot, on the 3d of February, 1635, the grant was executed April 22d,f and on the 7th of June following the president and council made a full transfer of their char- ter to the king. They at the same time urged upon the king the necessity of taking away the charter of Massachu- setts, and of appointing from among the lords proprietors a general governor for the whole territory, which probably would have been done but for the breaking out of the civil war.
We have only now to follow the history of one division of this great charter,-that granted to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, which embraced the original province of Maine, extending from the Piscataqua to the Kennebec River. Gorges lost no time in improving his acquisition. He gave to his province the name of New Somersetshire, from the county in England in which his estates were situated, and the same year sent over as Governor his nephew, Capt. William Gorges. The proprietor could establish no civil government without authority from the king, and Gorges was therefore indefatigable in procuring the necessary requisite for perfecting his title to the sovereignty, as well as to the soil of his province. His labors for this objeet were crowned with complete success April 3, 1639; but
prior to this William Gorges had arrived in the country, and held at Saco, March 21, 1636, the first court in this State of which we have any record. The members of this court are styled commissioners, and the record commences as follows :
" At a meeting of the commissioners at the house of Capt. Richard Boaighton, in Saco, this 21st day of March, 1636, present Capt. Rich- ard Bonighton, Capt. William Gorges, Capt. Thomas Caminoek, Mr. Henry Jocelyn, Gent., Mr. Thomas Purchase, Mr. Edward Godfrey, Mr. Thomas Lewis, Gent."?
" At this court four persons were fined five shillings each for getting drunk. George Cleaves|| was fined five shillings for rash specehes, and ' Mr. John BonightonT for inconti- neney with Ann, his father's servant, is fined forty shillings, and said Ann twenty shillings, and he to keep the child.' The jurisdiction of this court seems to have been co-exten- sive with the limits of the province, the commissioners present being from each extremity, and from the centre. It does not appear that it was held by virtue of any commis- sion, although that fact may be reasonably inferred. We have been able to find no record of this court later than 1637; but the few memoranda that have been preserved prove to us that the early settlers, notwithstanding the smallness of their number, were influenced by the same litigious spirit and the same passions which characterize a denser population, and a more refined state of society. Ac- tions of trespass and slander occur frequently on the record .**
" In 1636 the court passed an order, ' That every planter or inhabitant shall do his best endeavor to apprehend or kill any Indian that hath been known to murder any English, kill their cattle, or in any way spoil their goods, or do them violence, and will not make them satisfaction.' While they were thus endeavoring to protect their own rights from the aggression of the natives, they were not unmindful of the duties they owed that race ; and the next year the same court ordered that Arthur Brown and Mr. Arthur Mac- worth make John Cosinstt give full satisfaction to an Indian for a wrong done him.
" What sort of government or civil regulation existed, previous to the establishment of this court, we have no means of determining. Probably each plantation regulated its own affairs and managed its own police without aid from or communication with the others. The usual mode in the other colonies, in absence of higher authority, was by agreement among the settlers, in writing. called a combina- tion. Such was the course adopted at Plymouth, at Pis- cataqua, and in the western part of Maine in 1649; and it
? Cammock and Jocelyn lived nt Black Point, now Scarborough ; Purchase lived at Pejepscot, now Brunswick ; Godfrey, at Agamenti- cus, now York ; Lewis, at Winter Ilarbor, near the present Biddeford Pool.
|| We find this name spelled Clerces by Mr. Willis, but other an- thorities and the uniform modern spelling give it as above.
John Bonighton was the son of Richard ; he was notorious for turbulence und insubordination during his life.
## Willis' Ilist. Port.
tt Cosins was born 1596: he lived on an island near the mouth of Royall's River, in North Yarmouth, which he bought of Richard Vines, 1615, and1 which still bears his namo, until he was driven off in the war of 1675. He moved to York, where he died at n very ad- vaneed age, af:or 1683.
# Gorges' Narrative.
1 1 Haz., 383; Doug., 387.
# Jocelyn, 1 Chron. Chalin. Annals, 473.
28
HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND COUNTY, MAINE.
is believed, from the following record, that this was done at Winter Harbor :
". Feb. 7, 1626. It is ordered that Mr. Thomas Lewis shall appear the next court-day at the now dwelling-house of Thomas Williams, there to answer his contempt, and to shew cause why he will not do- liver up the combination belonging to us, and to answer such actions as are commenced against him.'
" In the settlement upon the Neck, and at the mouth of Presumpscott River, the number of inhabitants was 80 small, that, connected as the persons in cach were to its head, there was probably no call for the excreise of civil authority before the existence of courts here. And in re- gard to the plantation on Richmond's Island, we may sup- pose that Winter, under his general authority, controlled all its affairs.
" It appears by the records of the carliest court, that the forms of the trial by jury were observed, which have ever since continued, although in the early stages of our history, more power over issues of fact was assumed and exercised by the court than is consistent with modern practice.
" In the confirmation of Gorges' title by the king, in 1639, powers of government were conferred almost absolute .* In this charter, the name it now bears, was first bestowed in honor of the king's wife, who held a province of that name in France. It is described as extending from the Piscataqua River to the Kennebec, and up those rivers to their furthest heads, or until one hundred and twenty miles were completed, with all the islands within five leagues of the coast. The religion of the Church of England was established as the religion of the province. The charter conferred upon Gorges an unlimited power of appointment to office : to make laws with the assent of the majority of the freeholders; to establish courts from which an appeal laid to himself; to raise troops, build cities, raise a revenue from customs, establish a navy, exercise admiralty jurisdic- tion, erect manors, and exclude whom he chose from the province. Such powers were never before granted by any government to any individual, and he succeeded in procur- ing them by the most untiring efforts, all the other mem- bers of the council having failed to accomplish a similar object. ITis grandson, Ferdinando, in his account of Amer- ica, f says,-
"." He no sooner had this province settled upon him, but he gave public notice that if uny would undertake by himself and his asso- ciates, to transport a competent number of inhabitants to plant in any of his limits, ho would assign unto him or them such a proportion of lund as shookt in reason satisfy them, reserving only to himself a small high rent as two shillings or two shillings six pence for a bun- dred aeres per annum.'
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