USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Bristol > History of York, Maine, successively known as Bristol (1632), Agamenticus (1641), Gorgeana (1642), and York (1652) Vol. I > Part 16
USA > Maine > York County > York > History of York, Maine, successively known as Bristol (1632), Agamenticus (1641), Gorgeana (1642), and York (1652) Vol. I > Part 16
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42
1 In accordance with the ancient superstition that a murdered person bleeds afresh in the presence of the murderer, when she was brought to her husband's corpse it "bled abundantly"; as it did also when an alleged paramour was likewise brought before it, but no evidence was found against the latter (Winthrop Journal ii, 219).
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DEVELOPMENT OF GORGEANA
murder." (Winthrop Journal ii, 219.) With characteristic bias against everything and everybody connected with the Province of Maine, Winthrop comments on the mayor's denial: "but there might be skill in that and he was but a carnal man and had no wife in the country" - an insinuation made in ignorance of the fact that Garde's wife was dead.
In 1647 an event occurred which could not have been unexpected but which precipitated an element of confusion into the already unsettled state of public affairs in the province and in the kingdom. The Civil War was at its height with the faction under the lead of Cromwell gradu- ally overpowering the loyal forces of Charles. In the midst of the clash of arms the old knight of Long Ashton, too old and feeble to unsheath the sword for his prince, lay dying in his country estate in Somerset. Already fourscore years of an active life had been numbered in his days. Half of this busy career had been spent in extending the power, influence and glory of the English nation. He was one of the foremost of Britain's imperialists, and merits a place beside Gilbert, Raleigh, Drake and wherever the develop- ment of America, New England, Maine and York is called up in the minds of men. His early and forceful activities in promoting the discovery, exploration, settlement and development of the territory of New England helped to make possible the Popham venture, the fishing settlements on the coast, the Pilgrim movement of 1620 and the sub- sequent colonization of New Hampshire and Massachu- setts Bay.
On May 27 he breathed his last, and one need not have a sentimental vision to think of him on his deathbed, looking with dimmed vision to the Western horizon beyond which lay the land of his hopes, where his name had been fixed as a heritage for his descendants forever. He had not been privileged to see with his own eyes the new land of his dreams, but in the last light that comes to the passing soul there must have been revealed to him a pic- ture of the river of Agamenticus, the Manor House on its banks, and the scattered houses and fertile acres that made his city of Gorgeana the final and crowning memory of his life. In the chapel of Long Ashton the almost for- gotten remains of this patron saint of Maine's colonial era lie. Only the mental distortion of the times in which he
I73
HISTORY OF YORK
lived and the fanatical religious enmities and jealousies of contemporaries have deprived him in the past of his due meed of honor for his public services.
His final elimination from the religio-political arena must have been welcome news in Boston. As by the death in 1635 of Captain John Mason, who left only a widow and a minor grandson to become the responsible, guiding hands in New Hampshire, with its resulting con- fusion of council (of which Massachusetts took prompt advantage by annexing it as her own), so in 1647 the death of Gorges, leaving as his only heir a grandson, also a minor, deprived the Province of Maine and York of similar vigorous and authoritative support. The Civil War, gradually waged victoriously by the Puritans in England, completed the eclipse of the power of the two proprietaries as factors in the development of northern New England. Added to these unfortunate events were the internal distractions of a divided province fomented by George Cleeves of Casco, quietly encouraged by Massachusetts.
These events, transpiring almost simultaneously in England, had a profound effect on the fortunes of Gorge- ana. Added to this was the creation of the Province of Lygonia, within the bounds of his Province of Maine. On March 27, 1647 the Commissioners of Foreign Plantations, having heard the claims of Colonel Alexander Rigby for the legalization of the resuscitated Plough Patent, gave judgment in favor of Rigby to the full extent of his claim. Puritan politicians prevailed. Colonel Rigby had enlisted on the Parliamentary side, and Gorges, as is well known, was a Royalist. When George Cleeves, of Casco, the arch- trouble maker in the Province, dug up this abandoned patent, called "a broken tytle," he laid the foundation for bisecting the Province of Maine and disrupting its govern- ment. The hitherto futile schemes of this sinister figure had now come to complete fruition. A tract of land of uncertain boundaries, but decided to be forty miles square, extending from the Pejepscot to the Mousam Rivers, was carved by his enemies, out of the heart of the province granted to Gorges, and a new government set up inde- pendent of the lawful Lord Proprietor. Two months later to a day the old knight died. This last blow to his prestige perhaps hastened his end. All that was left of his magnif-
174
DEVELOPMENT OF GORGEANA
icent domain was reduced to the towns of Kittery, York and half of Wells to the Mousam (Maine Recorder ii, 65, 145).
Gorgeana, "the Metropolitan of the Province," was indirectly affected by this event, and the death of Gorges completed this double stroke of misfortune. The Civil War in England did the rest. In July 1649, despairing of receiving directions from the heirs of Gorges, the inhabi- tants of these three towns, "with one Free and unius animus Consent," formed a new government by electing "by most voysses" a set of officials to carry on the affairs of the Province; to be operative "tell further order power and authority shall come out of England." Under this condition it will be seen that this town constituted about half of the original province remaining, and the acts of this assembly were consequently that much the acts of the people of Gorgeana. Mr. Edward Godfrey was chosen Governor, Abraham Preble, Edward Rishworth and Nich- olas Shapleigh, Assistants, and Basil Parker, Recorder.
FREEDOM OF RELIGION GUARANTEED
At the first Court held on October 1649 the following law was enacted respecting religion:
It is ordered this Court and power thereof: That all gode people within the Jurisdiction of this province who are out of a Church way and be orthodox in Judgment and not scandolous in life, shall have full liberty to gather themselves in to a Church estate, provided they doe it in a Christian way: with the due observation of the rules of Christ revealed in his worde:
And every Church hath Free liberty of election and ordination of all her officers from tyme to tyme provided they be able, pious and orthodox (Maine Court Records i, 136).
As three out of the four members of the government were residents of Gorgeana this epochal pronouncement, guar- anteeing freedom of worship, places this town and the Province of Maine among the earliest torch-bearers of religious liberty in America, and was a challenge to the theological oligarchy of Massachusetts as distinct as that of Rhode Island and Maryland. The charter of the prov- ince decreed the religion of the Church of England as the "official" form of worship, but this ignored that require- ment and deliberately sanctioned the gathering of all "gode people, " complete freedom in establishing churches
175
HISTORY OF YORK
and of choosing their own officers. This bold stand has never received the attention it merits from historical writers, and is here set forth in precise detail as a testi- monial to the public men of this town who enacted it. That it proved their undoing, as it was diametrically opposed to the doctrines and policy of the Puritans of the Boston hierarchy, is evident from the rapid development of their scheme to seize this Province which they had long coveted. They could not permit such a flaunt from those who "ran a different course from us both in their ministry and civil administration," wrote Winthrop, to become crystallized into a permanent and recognized custom on their borders. It was a challenge to Cotton, Dudley and Wilson in their clerical hegemony of New England. Such an example of freedom of action set before their victims in Massachusetts could not be permitted to exist as a menace to their grip on the civil government of that colony.
For the three following years this emergency govern- ment functioned satisfactorily and this town is to be credited with an equal share in shaping the general poli- cies of the Province. In 1651 Abraham Preble was added to the Governor's Council and in 1652 he was replaced by Richard Bankes. It is interesting to note that at the incep- tion of this temporary government, "the priviledg of Accomenticus charter" was excepted from the action of the provincial authorities, as claimed under previous administrations. The city was still guarding its independ- ence.
176
CHAPTER XV THE LAST YEARS OF FREEDOM 1650-1651
Because of the preponderating influence of Gorgeana as the chief town of the Province, ever since it had been adopted by Gorges as his official residence, it has been and now is necessary to relate the progress of general political affairs in Maine, as it primarily affected the welfare of the town, the nerve center of provincial activity. The Royal- ist cause had been dealt a deathblow in January 1649 when the head of Charles the First rolled off the execu- tioner's block at Whitehall. The adherents of the king in Gorgeana were correspondingly depressed and hopeless, while the opportunists who can always be counted on to desert a losing side began to find excuses to join the chorus of hosannas sung by the followers of Cromwell and the Puritans in Massachusetts. With the loss of friends at court through the death of the Lord Proprietor, and the final collapse of the royal cause, the adherents of the king and Gorges faced the future with misgivings, as they saw their powerful opponents to the south preparing to insti- tute a claim to their ancient heritage. With the exception of Rhode Island it was the only frontier colony in New England where freedom of worship was legally established by law, and Maine had been marked for extinction as a political entity by the heresy hunters of Massachusetts. Religious freedom was calendared as a dangerous doctrine in the Index Expurgatorius of the Boston Theocracy. It was not the official explanation, publicly avowed, but the private letters and journals of the conspirators reveal it as the real motive which had been carefully nursed for the past dozen years. They had only delayed for an opportune time to start the job, and the fall of the monarchy provided the reward for their watchful waiting. It is an interesting study in Puritan morals and ethics. The plausible fiction which they decided to employ in justification of their rape of the Gorges property was that their northern boundary line ran into Maine and as a consequence it was under their jurisdiction. It will be necessary, to understand this
177
HISTORY OF YORK
extraordinary "claim," to ascertain what territory be- longed to Massachusetts by its charter. The Company of the Massachusetts Bay had been granted in 1629 "all that part of New England, in America which lies and extends between a great river there commonly called Monomack alias Merremack & a certain other river there called Charles River." This case of encroachment on the Maine province only relates to the northern limits "which lie," as the grant specified, "& be within the space of three English miles to the Northward of the said river called Monomack alias Merrymack; or to the Northward of any & every part thereof." To mark this clear limit they had in the year 1638 set up a "Bound House," so-called, on the coast three miles to the northward of the mouth of the Merrimack. The then province, and the present state of Maine lying altogether to the east of "any & every part" of the Merrimack River could not by any logical interpre- tation of the Massachusetts charter fall within the limits of it as above expressed. It would be equivalent to stating that an extension of the north bounds of York due east would include Augusta in its jurisdiction.
As soon as the leaders of the Massachusetts Colony got fairly settled in their allotted territory in 1630 and set their house in order, they began to look around them to see who their neighbors were, what their patent rights covered and why they had emigrated to the same New England. To the south of them the Plymouth Pilgrims, like them- selves religious doctrinaires and Separatists, could be approved as sympathetic and agreeable neighbors, and they could be dismissed as causes of anxiety in respect to ecclesiastical divergences. To the north of them lay the Province of New Hampshire, settled six years before the Massachusetts charter was granted, and being governed under the charter held by Capt. John Mason and his asso- ciates. Beyond this lay the Province of Maine in the pro- priety of Gorges, long settled under a like charter, physi- cally separated from Massachusetts by many miles of seacoast. This seems like a lesson in primary geography, but it is at the foundation of the whole "illegal and arro- gant" claim which was cunningly concocted in later years, with pious protestations of honorable interpretation of their boundary line three miles to the north of the Mer- rimac. They saw that these two provinces had commodi-
178
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THE LAST YEARS OF FREEDOM
ous harbors which Massachusetts lacked, and judged that in time this distinct commercial asset would constitute a manifest advantage in maritime rivalry. Emanuel Down- ing, a wealthy lawyer of London, brother-in-law of Win- throp, and the "friend at Court" of the Massachusetts Colony, had been apprised of this aspect of the situation, and in a letter to Secretary Coke, in 1633, asked that the charter limits of Massachusetts be extended further north "where were the best firs and timber." Nothing came of this dishonorable request as it could not be granted except by robbing Mason and Gorges of their possessions. How- ever it illumines the path of encroachments we are to tread in following their devious ways to attain their coveted end. Mason died in 1635, leaving the Province to his heirs, who, like himself, were absentee landlords, and naturally the management of affairs became unsettled through the inter- ference of local politicians seeking power in the confusion. Two years later came the great, as well as ridiculous "Antinomian" controversy in Massachusetts, in which Anne Hutchinson, its final victim, played the leading part. It was the first real opportunity the theological hair- splitters of Boston had found to stage a picturesque heresy inquisition. To understand what it was all about is beyond the comprehension of a sane mind. Mrs. Hutchinson be- lieved in a "Covenant of Grace" and the heresy hunters in a "Covenant of Works." As it happened that Mrs. Hutchinson was attracting too many adherents to her beliefs, which were opposed by Winthrop and his party, she was imprisoned and later banished out of the jurisdic- tion, with all her followers. Some of them went to Rhode Island and others to New Hampshire. Among the latter was Rev. John Wheelwright, her brother-in-law, who found a temporary sanctuary in Exeter. Temporary is the cor- rect word, for no sooner had he reached his destination, at the beginning of winter, ere these relentless priests of persecution, like a pack of hounds in full chase, started a campaign to drive him elsewhere, anywhere, beyond the haunts of men, into the northern snows. Disfranchised, denied an appeal to England, he continued his exile into Maine, where such religious deviltry was impossible under the liberal government of Gorges. From this incident dates the programme of the purpose of the clerical oligarchy of Massachusetts to crush or absorb their northern neigh-
179
HISTORY OF YORK
bors. They began promptly. In 1638 this entry is found in Winthrop's Journal (i, 276) :
By order of the last General Court the Governour wrote a letter to Mr. Burdet, Mr. Wiggin and others of the plantation of Pascataquack to this effect: That whereas there had been good correspondency be- tween us formerly, we could not but be sensible of their entertaining countenancing, etc., some that we had cast out, etc., and that our purpose was to survey our utmost limits and make use of them.
This threat implied that nobody could live in New England, in any territory adjacent to them, unless approved by the petty religious tyrants who had adopted the "Covenant of Works" as the doctrine and polity of the Massachu- setts church and state. It was a monstrous proposition but they hesitated at nothing to accomplish it. Surveyors, or "Artists," as they were designated, were employed to "lay out the line 3 miles Northward of the most Norther- most part of Merrimack," by order of the General Court September 6, 1638 (Mass. Col. Rec. i, 237), and in their travels and triangulations they learned that this river after running in a westerly direction for about forty miles it then turned abruptly at right angles to the northward. This astonishing information was reported to the Court and on May 22, 1639 the chief surveyor was granted addi- tional funds "for his journey to discover the running up of Merrimack" and the news was so full of possibilities that the Governor and Deputies later increased the reward (Mass. Col. Rec. i, 261). As a result of this exploration it was learned that the Merrimac had its source in Lake Winnepesoggee, many miles north of any point they had ever known before. It is not unlikely that Peter Weare was one of this party, as in later years he was called upon to testify to these facts in behalf of Massachusetts, and it is equally probable that this discovery and its employ- ment by Massachusetts to extend its bounds was known in York soon after. Weare, who was ever after one of those disloyal to Gorges, and always received his rewards when Massachusetts was in power, testified that in 1638 he was "upon the north side of the sd lake upon a great moun- taine" (Mass. Col. Rec. iv, pt. 2, page 243). It may not be inappropriate to compare this scene to another like event of sacred history when on another mountain temptation was laid before the great Exemplar of our Christian re- ligion, whose teachings prompted Him to spurn the evil
180
THE LAST YEARS OF FREEDOM
whisperings of an immoral domain. Unlike their professed leader these saints fell before the vision of an extension of their sectarian empire, undreamed of in their calculations or in the intent of the king who granted their limits by metes and bounds. In their joy at this turn of affairs the General Court voted that their line extended east and west "from sea to sea," whoever might happen to be within this circle, legally established by prior rights.
No pent-up Utica contracts our powers The boundless universe is ours.
Violent application of this impudent claim to unknown bounds, involving trespass on, or extinction of, the legal rights of others was not thought advisable at this time. It was felt necessary to prepare the victims for the sacri- fice by gradually gnawing at their edges as chance gave them excuse; by skilful propaganda through visiting clergy preaching pleasing prospects to the southward; by boring tactics from the inside engineered by renegades or settlers favorable to Massachusetts "planted" there for the pur- pose, and by any and every Jesuitical means encouraging disloyalty to the local authorities to accomplish the end they had planned. For the present it was a programme of peaceful penetration. The notorious Hugh Peter was sent into Maine in 1640 on such an errand. He thus reports his observations to Winthrop:
They are ripe for our government as will appeare by the note I have sent you. They grone for Government and Gospell all over that side of the country. I conceive that 2 or 3 fit men sent over may doe much good at this confluxe of things. These will relate how all stands in those parts (4 Mass. Hist. Coll. vi, 108).
This example will suffice to show the character of this dis- honorable scheme of sapping the allegiance and mining the property of others. At the same time when Exeter had protested against actual encroachment on her ter- ritory one is unprepared to hear the Massachusetts Gen- eral Court say that it looked upon the protest as "against good neighborhood, religion and common honesty"! A church quarrel in 1641, between two clergymen in Dover, doubtless fomented by the means described, gave Massa- chusetts the chance to intervene in New Hampshire, at the instance of one of the persons it had banished in 1638 for heresy. As a renegade he was now useful, and New
18I
HISTORY OF YORK
Hampshire was gathered into the fold by an act "more clearly an usurpation," says a neutral historian, "than was any later act of the crown which affected New Eng- land" (Osgood, American Colonies, i, 377).
This accomplished, the next step in the development of Massachusetts hegemony came through the confederation of the New England colonies in 1643, an offensive and defensive alliance of those faithful to the general spirit of the Puritan dogma. Both Maine and Rhode Island were omitted in this useful combination for mutual protection, either refused admission or ignored altogether. Winthrop assigns the reason for the exclusion of Maine in his "Journal" under date of May 15, 1643, as follows:
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