USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Bristol > History of York, Maine, successively known as Bristol (1632), Agamenticus (1641), Gorgeana (1642), and York (1652) Vol. I > Part 21
USA > Maine > York County > York > History of York, Maine, successively known as Bristol (1632), Agamenticus (1641), Gorgeana (1642), and York (1652) Vol. I > Part 21
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NATHANIEL MASTERSON
Matkanoll Martorform
This is the only one of Pilgrim connection who settled in this town. He was born in Leyden, Holland in 1628
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HISTORY OF YORK
(S. J. C. Mss. 1072), son of Richard and Mary (Goodall) Masterson, and was brought to Plymouth as a child in 1629 with his sister Sarah. His father died in 1633 and his widow married for her second husband Rev. Ralph Smith, at that time pastor of Plymouth. The boy lived with his step- father there and at Jeffrey's Creek, Manchester, Mass., until he reached his majority. He is found at Salem, 1654, Ipswich, 1657, and in 1659 he removed to York, as by a certificate sent to Holland by Governor Prince of the Plymouth Colony (Gemeente Archief, Leyden).
The Mastersons were of an old and well-established family of the landed gentry of Cheshire and this line migrated to the Weald of Kent in the middle of the six- teenth century. They were related by marriage to the Banks family of Ashford in that county. Richard Master- son went to Leyden in 1611 and soon joined the Pilgrim church there, and on November 23, 1619, married Mary Goodall, by whom he had two children, Nathaniel and Sarah, who married John Wood of Plymouth.
Nathaniel Masterson settled on Cider Hill, but how he obtained the lot where he made his home is a puzzle. In 1671 the selectmen agreed that "if it were not orderly granted," they would lay it out together with a second parcel of thirty acres adjoining (T. R. i, 41; Deeds iii, 120). Its bounds became a fruitful source of uncertainty to abuttors. He held the office of Marshal of the Province, as a partisan of Massachusetts, 1661 to 1665, when he was removed by the Gorges regime; restored to office 1668 and held the position continuously till 1686, perhaps longer. He was a victim of the Candlemas Day Massacre, 1692, with his wife, who was Elizabeth, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Thompson) Coggswell of Ipswich, and granddaughter of Rev. William Thompson, the early minister of Gorgeana. They were married July 31, 1657 and had the following issue:
i. Sarah, b. -; m. Arthur Bragdon; she was granted administra- tion of her father's estate March 8, 1691-2. She was killed by the Indians in 1703.
ii. Abial, b. -; captured at the Massacre of 1692 and redeemed, probably, in 1699. She was published to Isaac Foster, Jr. of Ipswich, December 27, 1710.
iii. Elizabeth, b. -; m. Samuel Young.
230
NEW SETTLERS OF THE THIRD DECADE
SAMUEL SAYWARD
He was a son of Edmund Sayward of Ipswich, an early settler of that town. He came to York, probably at the invitation of his uncle, Henry Sayward, to work in the mills, and either married here or brought a wife Joanna, by whom he had a daughter Aspira or Asfira (Saphira ?). He died before June 1691, and his estate was administered by Daniel Manning of Ipswich (probably a relative of his wife), James Sayward and John Moulton (Deeds v, part 2, 10).
SAMUEL JEWELL
Samuell Foroll The appearance and ex- planation of the residence of this person and his wife Mary in Gorgeana in 1650 does not offer any particular sug- gestive reason for his brief stay here. In the list of"" doubt- ful debts due the estate of Robert Button of Boston, in 1650, the name of Samuel Jewell of Gorgeana is found, and on July 24 of that year William Hooke gave to her his half of Cape Neck upon the condition that "I do not returne for New England" (Deeds.i, 121). As he did return she did not acquire title to the property. He was a juror in 1650, but did not sign the Submission in 1652 and probably had gone to the Isles of Shoals, as in 1653 he signed a petition from thence. In 1655 he was admitted as an inhabitant of Boston, with Mark Hands as security. In 1657 he had died there and his wife returned an inventory of her own wearing apparel at £5-3-0 as part of his estate. That ends their story. His signature shows him to be a person of educa- tion, able to write well (Deeds ii, 9; iii, 109; Suffolk Pro- bate; Maine Court Records i, 141, 143).
MARK HANDS
This person probably came in the year 1639 to this country, aged twenty years, a nailer by occupation, set- tling at Boston. He was a witness here in 1653 to the deed to Ellingham and Gale (i, 35-36), and in 1655 was bond for Samuel Jewell. In a letter from Barbadoes August 4, 1662, he mentions his "cousin Everill" and "sister Han- ford" (Sup. Jud. Ct. Mss., 1090).
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CHAPTER XX
RESTORATION OF THE AUTHORITY OF GORGES IN 1662
Ferdinando Gorges presented his petition to the king under date of April 4, 1661, in which he recited the labors of his grandfather in the discovery and colonization of New England, wherein he had spent the greater part of his fortune. In return therefor King Charles I had granted him a patent in the fifteenth year of his reign, for which he had provided a government, but that "certaine Eng -- lish Inhabitants in New England called the Mathechew- sists taking advantage of the late rebellion here dureing which time your Petitioner durst not assert his right to the said Premisses, have without any coulour of right en- croached upon all or upon the greatest part of the said premisses descended unto your petitioner from his grand- father ... which was the greatest Patrimony that your Petitioners grandfather left him" (Col. Papers xv, 31). Doubtless assured of the favor of the committee to whom this was referred he did not wait for a formal report, but sent his first definitive orders to his subjects in Maine embodied in a commission consisting of six separate articles for the reestablishment of his provincial govern- ment. This document was dated May 23, 1661 and he required of them: (I) to proclaim the return of the king to the throne of his father; (2) to collect the arrearages of rent according to the charter; (3) to inform the freeholders of their stewardship; (4) to proclaim the proprietary rights at the next General Courts of Maine and Massa- chusetts; (5) and (6) related to the defense of the rights of the Lord Proprietor. This manifesto was publicly dis- cussed at a mass meeting of the inhabitants of Maine held at Wells, December 27, 1661, and all the articles were accepted. They further resolved that the announcement of the restoration should take place at or before the last day of January 1661-2, and "be acted and carried on with greatest solemnity and acclamations of Christian Joy" (Col. Papers xv, 96).
In accordance with the plans adopted at this meeting
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RESTORATION OF AUTHORITY OF GORGES
the new Commissioners, representing Gorges, issued elec- tion warrants dated January 30, 1661-2 in the name of the king and by authority of the Lord Proprietor, addressed to the freeholders of the province to assemble March 31 proximo and vote for one deputy in each town to represent their respective interests at the next General Assembly which was to be held at Wells May 25, following. The election was held pursuant to the warrant and a full dele- gation from all the towns in the province met as directed. Edward Rishworth represented this town.
The officials of Massachusetts did not allow this occa- sion to pass without opposition, although they were con- scious that they no longer had any standing at court. They sent Major Daniel Dennison, Major William Hathorne and Capt. Richard Waldron to Maine to stir up as much trouble as possible. A voluminous corre- spondence was inaugurated by them which lasted for three days. The difference in their attitudes under the Crom- wellian regime and the restored monarchy is apparent to the most superficial observer. Finding that they were making no headway in this paper warfare the Massachu- setts officers assumed a belligerent air. "As wee feared," they finally wrote, "soe wee find our time would be spun out in fruitless and insignificant papers." And concluding with a protest against the action of the Gorges commis- sioners as contrary to their solemn engagements and order- ing them to "quicklie dissolve the assemblie." Heretofore this authoritative tone had yielded results but the Gorges commission met this by a counter proclamation requiring all pretenders of authority, "not immediately derived from his Majestie," to desist from further molestation of "the good people of this Province." The commissioners, Francis Champernowne, Henry Jocelyn, Nicholas Shap- leigh, and Rev. Robert Jordan, courageous enough them- selves, could not stiffen the resistance of the deputies from the towns, who had so often been browbeaten by the tactics of Massachusetts, and now were influenced by the story that the king had assured them he would confirm their jurisdiction; and by the claims of the Boston repre- sentatives that they were bound by their oaths of Sub- mission given in the past and could not now evade them. To this specious argument the deputies meekly yielded and with one dissenting vote, cast by Richard Nason of
233
HISTORY OF YORK
Kittery, they decided to recognize the validity of their signatures and oaths of supremacy to Massachusetts! This decision they sent to the Gorges commissioners in which they say: " ... Considering our present state, that as our subscriptions and oathes have engaged us to the Massatusetts Authoritie, wee humbly conceave it most agreeable to right and reason and the Cunteries saftie to Equesse (Acquiesce) under the said Authoritie untill oppor- tunitie give a seasonable time of triall to the gentlemen of the Massatusetts and your worships of this cause before his Majestie, our Supreme Judge, unto whom our subjec- tion is att all times readie as his pleasure is pleased to desire itt, as appertaining to the one or the other." In a vigorous protest against this inexplicable attitude the Gorges commissioners replied : "You conceave and declare your conseptions as most agreeable to 'right and reason' and the 'saftie of the Cuntrie' that we should acquiesse wee answere that itt is immediatelie to the Magna Charta of our Nation and destructive to the whole Law which is the right reason."
The Massachusetts agents, taking advantage of this rift among their opponents, grew bolder and issued a war- rant to the freeholders to appear before them, and receive such orders and directions as shall be communicated to them, and Marshal Nathaniel Masterson was ordered to publish this forthwith. They followed this with a letter to the Gorges commissioners in which they truculently announce that they "are nott affrighted by any Commis- sions from Ferdinando Gorges Esquire. You have made to large a progress in these disorderlie actings whereon if you shall continue to the disturbance of the Kings peace you will inforce us to change our stile: you know wee can- nott owne Mr. Gorges Commissioners ... we may nott playe with you, butt once more advise and require you to put your period to your unjust violations of the rights of the Massachusetts." The Deputies adhered to their con- ception of "right." And now for the first time in the his- tory of their usurpation of authority the Massachusetts officials yielded the full fruits of their tactical position. A conference was held and a compromise was agreed upon by which two representatives of each party should hold the next County Court at York in July following. The writs were to be issued in the king's name, without prejudice.
234
RESTORATION OF AUTHORITY OF GORGES
Meanwhile news came from London that the Council for Foreign Plantations had reported on February 15, 1661-2 in favor of the claims of Godfrey and the heirs of Mason in New Hampshire, setting the ad Damnum at five thousand pounds. The General Court was thoroughly alarmed at this turn of affairs and felt that something must be done to save their face.
The hybrid court, devised at Wells, met in our first meetinghouse on July 6, according to agreement, Jocelyn and Shapleigh as Justices for Gorges, and Richard Wal- dron and Robert Pike for Massachusetts. Robert Jordan, the uncompromising opponent of the Boston hierarchy, could not contain his resentment at this temporizing expedient and addressed a protest "To a respective As- semblie att Acomenticus undulie stiled York," in which he demanded that certain requirements be fulfilled. It is refreshing to read his revival of the name of Agamenticus, even by an outsider, who resented the name of York bestowed on this town in the manner of its accomplish- ment.
This compromise with a principle was unpopular from the beginning and aroused the first fighting words that had ever come from the people of Maine to the usurpers. This broadside blast was signed by thirty of the leading inhabitants of York. In it they charge the Massachusetts authorities with neglecting to execute effectively their pre- tensions to be the legal proprietors of the Province. "Your tollerating," they said, "such an inconsiderate number of opposers frequently to violate & trample upon yr author- ity & laws, as cannot be altogether unknowne to you, to the obstruction of Justice, infringeing our Lybertys, devid- ing our peace and if not speedily prevented by your Wor- ships, may as the case stands, snarl us in the bonds of Inextricable & prejudiciall Injuries, upon whom, under God, & our dread sovereigne wee looke att our selves Ingaged att present to depend for our security & releife" (Mass. Arch. iii, 269). They closed this indictment of incompetency with a notice that they would expect "due & seasonable performance" of their obligations to main- tain law and order. This was signed by the following residents :
Alcock, John
Austin, Matthew
Bankes, Richard
Bragdon, Arthur Sr.
Bragdon, Arthur Jr. Bragdon, Thomas
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HISTORY OF YORK
Curtis, Thomas
Johnson, William
Rishworth, Edward
Davis, Nicholas
Junkins, Robert
Roans, William
Donnell, Henry
MacNair, Alexander
Sayward, Henry
Donnell, Thomas
Masterson, Nathaniel
Smyth, John
Everest, Andrew
Maxwell, Alexander
Stover, Sylvester
Grant, James Sr.
Moulton, Thomas
Twisden, John
Grant, James, Jr.
Parker, George
Twisden, Samuel
Green, Nicholas
Pearce, John
Weare, Peter
Fourteen of these signers had signed the Submission, and they were joined by seventy-seven persons from the other towns of the province. It meant: "Either govern or get out !"
The rupture was precipitated by Massachusetts. It sent Capt. Richard Waldron to York to attend the ad- journed meeting of the Court and administer the oaths to them. Jocelyn and Shapleigh protested this action as "being contrary to our former articles and a collateral agreement with our Commissioners at Wells." This col- lateral understanding probably related to the administra- tion of the oaths, which was to be done by each side to its own officials. Waldron being sent to administer the several oaths precipitated the inevitable break. The opposition to the continuance of any compromise was now crystallized. The warrants for the election of deputies to the General Court at Boston went unheeded. For the three following years the Province of Maine was almost without representation in that body (Mass. Col. Rec. iv, pt. 2, pp. 2, 41, 72, 100). The election writs were torn down in several towns, and a general sense of uncertainty arose as these acts against Massachusetts authority went unpunished, and her partisans called for some show of reprisal. Her answer was, as usual, persecution and prose- cution in a Court presided over by her partisans, but this phase will wait for a relation of developments in England which directly affect this town.
Its session had been preceded by a busy campaign of espionage conducted by its camp followers picking up malicious gossip from tale-bearers in every hamlet from Kittery Point to Pemaquid, and as a result the present- ments comprised every sort of allegation from disrespect- ful remarks about John Cotton, long since dead, to like opinions of the living officials of Massachusetts whom one called "hypocritical rogues." Champernowne, Jocelyn, Jordan and Shapleigh were indicted for renouncing the
236
RESTORATION OF AUTHORITY OF GORGES
authority of Massachusetts and using means "for the sub- jecting thereof under pretence of a sufficient power from Esqr Gorges, to take off the people, which is manifest to the contrary." All these citizens, victims of this novel and vindictive court of justice, were heavily fined. It had all the quality of the Bloody Assizes of Jeffrey's, minus his gallows, and if Cromwell had been living and in power the hangman's noose would have been used to stifle opposition. The spirit but not the courage to go to this extreme ani- mated them, but they dared not risk the wrath of their sovereign.
The record of this period would not be complete with- out an adequate reference to the activities of the aged founder of the town in his efforts to secure justice for York and himself. Ampler particulars of them have been printed by the author in two separate volumes which deal with this phase of his career.1 A more concise review of them is here set out to show his continuous devotion to his adopted home in the New World. "After 3 yeares there spent in vane for redress," he wrote to Mr. Secretary Povey of the Board of Trade and Plantations, "I came for England ... then I got a reference from O: P: (Oliver Protector) nothing effected, then one from R : P: (Richard Protector) the referes met divers times" (Colonial Papers, P.R.O. xv, 32). It was a desperate chance to jump from the Puritan frying pan in New England into the Puritan fire in England, but it was his only hope for satisfaction. This he decided to do in 1655 after he had recognized the folly of signing the Submission under force and had repented of it. It is true he was appealing to a court adamant against any favors or justice to Royalists, but he kept knocking at the gates for a hearing though ears were deaf to his appeal. He bombarded the officers in charge of colonial affairs with letters, broadsides and personal recitals of his grievances through five weary years fruit- lessly.
The end of the Puritan commonwealth came in 1660 with the restoration of the Merrie Monarch to the throne
1 Edward Godfrey, His Life, Letters and Public Services, 1584-1664, by Charles Edward Banks, 4to pp. 88, privately printed 1887.
New England's Vindication by Henry Gardiner, London, 1660; reprinted by the Gorges Society 1884, 4to pp. 84, edited by Charles Edward Banks. This pamphlet was undoubtedly written by Godfrey as the material and phraseology are clearly his own. Gardiner probably financed it and published it under his own name as propaganda for the benefit of the Maine Royalists.
237
.
HISTORY OF YORK
of his ancestors. It was a day of readjustment and God- frey hoped his triumph was at hand. Twenty years pre- viously he had met the fanatical Hugh Peter trying to wreck the church in York as an emissary of Winthrop, and now he was a witness of the last scene in the career of this turbulent parson when he was dragged, on the hurdles, from Newgate to Charing Cross in. October 1660, to be hung, drawn and quartered and his ghastly head impaled on a pole at London Bridge. In the following January he saw that other religious agitator, the crazy wine-cooper and Fifth Monarchy man, Thomas Venner, who had owned a lot in York, follow the impetuous Peter to this horrible end and it seemed as if the day of reckoning had arrived at last. But Godfrey was living on borrowed time and slender resources. He was then nearing fourscore years and the Usurpation had deprived him of his property interests, while the cost of his efforts for redress had exhausted his resources in the past five years of rebuffs at the courts of Cromwell. The first governor of the Province of Maine, elected by "the most voysses," was to find the road to success nearly as slow under the king as it had been under the Protectorate. The business of restoring the kingdom to normalcy was the first consideration. The new officials had to clean house completely and private wrongs and rebellious colonists overseas were obliged to wait for attention.
Godfrey joined the victims of the illegal proceedings of Massachusetts in prayers to the throne and pleas for relief. Increasing poverty, however, stared him in the face and he was obliged to claim his privileges as a member of the Merchants Guild of London, when in decayed cir- cumstances, and to seek sanctuary in Ludgate Prison, the debtors' refuge, where he would be free from his creditors. The poorhouse was the other alternative. Ludgate was built for merchants of the city who had suffered reverses in maritime business overseas and was then situated near the present Ludgate Circus. The inmates could live there for a trifling cost and had the privilege of leaving under convoy of an attendant who protected them from inter- ference. It is but little consolation to read that the curious pen of Roger Ascham had described Ludgate as "non sceleratorum carcer, sed miserorum custodia," when we remember the political and religious enmity which drove
238
RESTORATWW SOF AUTHORITY OF GORGES
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HISTORY OF YORK
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RESTORATION OF AUTHORITY OF GORGES
him from the home and the lands he had developed in the wilderness. It is entirely probable that he entered this resort voluntarily, as he had a privilege to do, because of the cheapness of living there, but he was to all intents a prisoner, subject to its regulations. A letter of Godfrey, dated October 5, 1661, to John Winthrop, Jr., who was then in London, discloses his residence in the prison, where he invites Winthrop to visit him, as he "is restraned of his liberty." He also asked his old partner in the patent of Agamenticus, Mr. Samuel Maverick, to do the like, "it may be worth this labor" (4 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. vii, 380). A little over two weeks after this his only son Oliver Godfrey was buried at Seal, Kent, and thus he was left alone to carry on his fight. From his cot in the prison he continued to write or dictate documents reciting his serv- ices to colonization and the disloyalty of the Massachu- setts officials to the Crown. His last letter from Ludgate was dated April 7, 1663, when his dreams of restoration were slowly dissolving, and he closed it with this appeal to Secretary Nicolas : "I humbly crave two words in answer." His last earthly debt was soon to be paid. In the register of St. Martin's Ludgate, the prisoners church, is recorded the end of his romantic career, at fourscore years, in these words:
1663/4 Edward Godfry, a prisoner of Ludgate died of old age, buried ffebruary xxiiij th.
Surely this is a sad and strange epitaph that marks the end of the Founder of York, but it is not the only one. In his last appeal to the officials it is inspiring to read his belief in the future of the Province of Maine "which is of more consarnement," he wrote, "than any part of America as yet settled on by the English."
But the movements of the king, in behalf of his loyal subjects in the Province of Maine, were exasperatingly slow. He had been on the throne for nearly five years and had done nothing to restore their rights, except to send letters to Massachusetts and their agents, recounting their disloyalty and their delinquencies. This was playing their game. But there was some excuse for his delays. As may be understood ten years of Civil War in England, with the fanatical Puritans busy destroying the beautiful stone and wood carvings and stained glass windows in
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