USA > New Hampshire > Colony, province, state, 1623-1888: history of New Hampshire > Part 6
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In 1676 a force of seventy men from Essex, and sixty from Mid- dlesex, were sent as a reinforcement to the Piscataqua. Exeter and Haverhill were declared frontier towns. Scouting parties were maintained, and a bounty was offered for scalps of Indians. The county of Dover and Portsmouth were authorized to make
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a special rate of taxation to meet the expenses of the war. The refugees from the eastward were enrolled; and seventy soldiers from Suffolk were sent to reinforce Piscataqua. Major- General Denison was appointed commander-in-chief. During the war a contest was being carried on in England of much im- portance to New Hampshire, as Robert Tufton Mason, grand- son of Captain John Mason, had presented his petition to the King, claiming the Province of New Hampshire as his patrimony, while his claim was being combatted by William Stoughton and Peter Bulkley, the agents of the Massachusetts colony. The hearing was had in April, 1677. Gorges, the claimant of Maine, who brought his suit jointly with Mason, won his case, when his claim was promptly bought up by the Massachusetts agents. Mason's claim was not for the government but for the land, and was left open for further adjudication. Edward Randolph, Mason's kinsman and agent, visited New England in the summer of 1676, and rather caustically reported on the state of affairs in the colonies to the Council of Trade : "No advantages, but many disadvantages, have risen to the English by this warr, for about six hundred men have been slain and twelve captains, most of them stout and brave persons and of loyal principles, whilst the Church members had liberty to stay at home and not hazard their persons in the wilderness." So it is not surprising that the next year, 1677, a more stringent observance of the Sabbath was ordered. " Offenders that shall any way transgress against the Laws, title Saboath, either in meeting house by abusive carriage or misbehavior, by making any noyse or otherwise, or during the day shall * be * put into a cage in Boston, set up in the market place,"
and in other towns where county courts shall appoint, and there remain till tried. The Indians about the Piscataqua who had submitted were held on a reservation at Cocheco, and were forbidden to carry arms unless licensed by Major Waldron.
The commission constituting a President and Council for the Province of New Hampshire passed the Great Scal of England, Sept. 18, 1679.
The erection of New Hampshire into a royal province was
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undoubtedly due to the claims of Mason, who could get no redress from the Massachusetts courts. As events proved, he found the people of the new Province, who had enjoyed possession of their lands for over half a century, as bitterly opposed to his claims and demands for rent as ever. They threw every obsta- cle in his way, and he got very little satisfaction from the arrangement. He died a disappointed man.
During the union with Massachusetts the Congregational, or republican form of church government, had become firmly seated in the four townships, and the people had become accus- tomed to self-government, in open town meeting. From feudal dependents they had become independent freemen, jealous of their rights and impatient of an irresponsible authority. Many of the more severe laws of the Bay Colony, on account of public sentiment, were a dead letter in their courts. Their descend- ants have only to blush at the whipping of some Quaker women. On the other hand, they had submitted to strict laws, established an impartial judiciary, built churches and settled learned orthodox ministers, called in the schoolmaster and contributed to the enlargement of Harvard College, and had been greatly prospered in their agriculture and in their commerce. Already the foundation of large fortunes had been gathered in Ports- mouth and on Great Island.
They had become not only a law-abiding, but a religious com- munity, and as Church and State were closely identified in those early days, before considering the Indian wars, it may be of interest to glance at the
CHURCH HISTORY.
To appreciate fully the importance of the Church in early colonial history, it must be remembered that it was not until nearly half a century after the Revolution that Church and State were finally separated in New England. Over the most of the civilized world, at that period, the Pope claimed and exercised supreme authority. Northern Germany and northern Europe gen- erally had followed the lead of Luther, Calvin and other reformers, and had separated from the Church of Rome. In England, commencing with Henry VIII, the crown had assumed to be at the head of spiritual as well as temporal affairs, and arbitrarily dictated the creed and the forms of wor- ship. To escape this tyranny, the Pilgrims and Puritans, from among
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whom came the early settlers of Hampton, Exeter and Dover, had obtained their charter for New England. The form of government which they estab- lished was a theocracy as well as a democracy, under which the Church was all important. The Puritans, however, while claiming toleration for them- selves, were not willing to grant toleration to others. Respect for the Church and for the ministers and for the ordinances of religion was rigidly enforced, severe punishment being inflicted for the slightest departure from uniformity of belief. The ministers, in one sense, were the rulers of the community, and as such deserve a place in the civil history of the Common- wealth. Descent from one of these early magnates, to a New Englander, is equivalent to a patent of nobility.
When the township of Hampton was granted for a plantation, in Septem- ber, 1638, some of the grantees were already "united together by Church government." The original members of the Church and the first settlers of the town, generally, were Puritans. They brought a pastor with them, and soon after their arrival they selected a site and built a meeting-house. Rev. Stephen Batchelor, the first pastor, may be regarded as the father and founder of the town. At that time he was not far from seventy-seven years old. On landing in Boston, in 1632, he joined his son-in-law, Christopher Hussey, at Lynn, and later made the settlement at Hampton. In 1639, Rev. Timothy Dalton was associated with Mr. Batchelor, but dissensions arose and Mr. Batchelor accepted a call to Exeter. In 1656, or 1657, he returned to England, where he died at the age of one hundred years. His associate, Mr. Dalton, was sixty years of age when he settled in Hampton. In 1647 he had asso- ciated with him Rev. John Wheelwright, formerly pastor of the church at Exeter, and later from Wells, who remained ten years. In 1658, Mr. Wheel- wright was in England, where he met his old collegefriend, Oliver Cromwell, but on the restoration of Charles II he returned to America and was settled over the church in Salisbury, where he died,' the oldest pastor in New England. Rev. Seaborn Cotton,2 eldest son of Rev. John Cotton, of Boston, was associated with Mr. Dalton, in 165S, and on Mr. Dalton's death, in 1660, was ordained pastor. He died suddenly in April, 1686, "a thorough scholar and an able preacher." The town gave Mr. Cotton a farm of two hundred acres. His wife was Dorothy, daughter of George Simon Bradstreet. After his father's death, Rev. John Cotton, 2d,3 preached occasionally, as did Rev. John Pike, who had been driven from Dover by Indian depredations. Mr. Cotton was ordained minister at Hamp- ton in 1696. He was " beloved and respected, and died, very much lamented." in 1710, very suddenly, and was succeeded by Rev. Nathaniel Gookin, who continued as pastor until 1734. Mr. Gookin's successor was Rev. Ward Cotton, who continued to preach until 1765, when he was dismissed and was succeeded by Rev. Ebenezer Thaver,4 whose labors terminated with his life, in 1792. After his death, there came a rupture between town and church, the
I November, 1679.
z Born in 1633 (Harvard College, 1651), while his parents were crossing the Atlantic.
3 Born in 1658, Harvard College, 1678. 4 Born 1734, Harvard College, 1753.
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former calling and settling, in 1796, Rev. William Pidgin,1 and voting them- selves Presbyterians; the latter ordaining Rev. Jesse Appleton,2 the same year. Mr. Appleton remained at Hampton until elected second president of Bowdoin College in 1807. He married, in 1800, Elizabeth, daughter of Hon. Robert Means of Amherst, and their daughter was the wife of President Franklin Pierce.3 Mr. Pidgin was also dismissed in 1807, receiving a call to Minot, Maine, and afterwards dying at Portland.4 After this the two factions became united, and settled, in 1808, the Congregational minister, Rev. Josiah Webster, who continued with the church until his death in 1837. He was followed, in 1838, by Rev. Erasmus D. Eldredge; in 1849, by Rev. Solomon Payson Fay; in 1855, by Rev. John Colby. From this account it will be seen that the Congregational church of Hampton is the oldest in the State.
At Exeter, after Mr. Wheelwright removed to Wells, in 1641, there was no settled minister, on account of divisions in the church, until Rev. Samuel Dudley, a son of Governor Thomas Dudley of Massachusetts, was settled in 1650. There is no record of a church during his ministry, which lasted until his death, in 1683. A church was organized and Rev. John Clark 5 was settled in 1698. Rev. John Odlin 6 was settled in 1706; married the widow of his predecessor, and ministered to the town until his son, Rev. Woodbridge Odlin, was ordained as his father's colleague and successor in 1743. The son's ministry continued thirty-two years. Rev. Isaac Mansfield? was ordained in 1776 and dismissed in 1787. He moved to his native town and became a magistrate. Rev. William F. Rowland8 was settled in 1790 and dismissed in 1828. He was succeeded in 1829 by Rev. John Smith; in 1838. by Rev. William Williams; in 1843, by Rev. Joy H. Fairchild; in 1845, by Rev. Roswell D. Hitchcock. There was a rupture, in 1744, of the church of Exeter, when the second church was formed, and Rev. Daniel Rogers9 was first pastor. He was a descendant of John Rogers, the martyr of Smithfield, a friend of Whitefield, a pall-bearer at his funeral, and closed his ministry and life in 1785. He was succeeded in 1792 by Rev. Joseph Brown, a native of Chester, England, who remained five years. In 1817, Rev. Isaac Hurd was settled and continued three years in the ministry. Rev. Asa D. Mann was settled, in 1851, as a colleague pastor.
Rev. William Leveridge, the first minister of Dover, received the degree of A. B. from Cambridge College, England, in 1625; that of A. M. in 1630. He was an able and worthy Puritan minister, -ardent, industrious, enter- prising, and possessed a good deal of independence of character. He left Dover in 1635, from want of support, and died on Long Island in 1692. He was succeeded, in 1637, by George Burdet, a minister from Yarmouth. England, - restless, intriguing and ambitious,-whose course has been
I Dartmouth College, 1794. 2 Born 1772, Dartmouth College, 1792.
3 Mr. Appleton died at Brunswick in 1819.
4 In 1848, aged seventy-five.
5 Born in Newbury, Mass., in 1670; he died in 1705.
6 Born in Boston, 1683 ; Harvard College, 1702 ; died in 1754.
7 Born at Marblehead, 1750: Harvard College, 1767; died in 1826.
8 Born in Plainfield, Conn., in 1761 ; Dartmouth College, 1784 ; died in 1843.
9 Harvard College, 1725.
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noted. Then came Hanserd Knollys,1 who landed at Boston in 1638 and the same year settled and organized the first church in Dover. In the trouble with Larkham, the more ardent Puritans sustained Knollys, who, however, in 1641, became weary of contention and left the field, returning to his aged father in England, where he joined the Baptists, and was persecuted till he died fifty years after. Thomas Larkham 2 was an able and learned man, but as turbulent as Burdet. He favored the Episcopacy, using its liturgy in burial services. He returned to England in 1642, became a devotedly pious man, and died in 1669. The Puritans having gained the ascendancy in Dover, the people applied to the authorities in Boston, for a minister, and Daniel Maud, a graduate of Emanuel College, Cambridge, a schoolmaster in Boston, was settled and continued to minister to the parish } from 1642 till his death in 1655. He was succeeded by Rev. John Rayner, Rev. John Rayner, Jr., and Rev. John Pike, before the separation from Massa- chusetts. Under the former came the trouble with the Quakers, the exchange of a drum for a bell for calling the worshippers together, and the building of a meeting-house at Oyster River; under the latter came the Indian troubles.
Among the assets of Captain John Mason, there were articles which indi- cated that some attention had been paid to religion - of the Established form. As early as 1640, a glebe of fifty acres was deeded to the church- wardens and a chapel and parsonage seem to have been built. The first orthodox minister was Joshua Moody, who was settled in 1658. To encour- age him, those who slept or took tobacco on the Lord's day during service were doomed to a cage. A church of eight members was organized in 1671. After the separation from Massachusetts, he got into trouble, in 1684, with Gov- ernor Cranfield, for refusing to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper indiscriminatingly, was imprisoned and released only on his promising to leave the colony. He returned in 1693 and died in 1697. He was succeeded by Rev. Nathaniel Rogers, who was succeeded, in 1723, by Rev. John Fitch ; in 1746, by Rev. James Langdon, who was called to be president of Harvard Col- lege in 1774; in 1779, by Rev. Joseph Buckminster : in 1812, by Rev. Israel W. Putnam.
There is one feature of the union of New Hampshire and Massachusetts, the distorted construction of the Hilton Patent, which Mr. Jenness has carefully investigated, and from his valuable pamphlet the following extracts are taken :
Having obtained jurisdiction over the territory about the Piscataqua river, the Massachusetts General Court, in June, 1641, enacted a law defining the Hilton Patent as extending from the mouth of the river at Strawberry Bank, thence around the
1 Born in 1598, at Cawkwell, England ; a graduate at Cambridge, England, ordained in the Estab- lished Church in 1629.
2 Born in 1601 ; a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge.
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shores of the Great Bay up the Exeter river to Squamscott Falls, and three miles back into the country. The additional terri- tory thus embraced was known as the Squamscott Patent. This construction was never fully carried out, but served to furnish the Bay Colony with a pretext for jurisdiction. In the act of annexation, the voluntary submission of the planters and patentees was not mentioned, although their course alone made annexation possible; but the Massachusetts authorities sagaciously resolved that the whole territory was "within the Massachusetts bounds."
Having securely extended their jurisdiction, they had little or no further interest in the river patents ; but difficulties and injustices of many sorts soon sprang up all over the annexed territory, which long disturbed the quiet of the new govern- ment. When Dover was laid out, in 1642, Bloody Point was excluded from the new township. The following year, how- ever, the marsh and meadow and four hundred acres of upland on Bloody Point were annexed to Dover ; and in 1644 the entire neck of land was joined to that township. The inhabitants of Strawberry Bank and of Dover were hostile to the construc- tion placed upon the Hilton or Squamscott Patent. The lower plantation on the Piscataqua, after 1641, had undergone a com- plete transformation, civil and religious. A party of strict Puritans had, by the aid of Massachusetts, gotten possession of that plantation, and under the system of the Bay Colony were enabled to perpetuate their power at their own pleasure, and to allot among themselves, some eight or ten in number, nearly all the valuable common lands within their limits. According to a petition to the King, made in 1665 by some of the non-free- men of Portsmouth, "five or six of the richest men of the parish ruled, swayed, and ordered all offices, both civil and military, at their pleasure," and " have kept us under hard servi- tude, and denied us our public meeting, the common prayer sacraments, and decent burial of the dead ;" and "have also denied us the benefit of freemen * * and have engrossed the greatest part of the lands within the limits of the plantation into their own hands."
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In 1655 the General Court attempted a compromise, and appointed a committee to settle the bounds of the Squamscott Patent, and excluded all the settlements below Boiling Rock. John and Richard Cutts, Captain Brian Pendleton, Richard Mar- tyn and Joshua Moodey, and a few others who then ruled the lower plantation and were owners of the Piscataqua or Great House Patent, accepted this line, but soon acquired by pur- chase, for a nominal sum, nearly all the lands embraced by their own claim.
The only substantial advantage derived from the Massachusetts construction of the Hilton Patent was taken by the Massachusetts themselves. Jurisdic- tion over the Piscataqua had been obtained by the skilful use of that instrument, and once got it was firmly kept, after that instrument had dis- appeared. But this usurpation, of which it was said by Judge Potter, "a more unjust and tyrannical act never was perpetrated on this continent," was not destined to endure for many years. The people of the lower Piscataqua were in spirit deadly hostile to the Massachusetts Bay. Shortly after the annexation, a few of the Puritan sort and faith had crept into the country, and by the aid of the Bay had seized on the offices and places of power and appropriated to themselves nearly all the common lands; but the original planters grew daily more and more incensed. In 1651 the inhabitants of Strawberry Bank openly rebelled and attempted to withdraw their subjec- tion to the Boston government. But this outbreak was suppressed. Another effort was made to the same purpose on the arrival of the Royal Commis- sioners, in 1664, though without permanent success. But in 1679, the Massachusetts usurpation over the Piscataqua was terminated by the erection of New Hampshire into a Royal Province.
Thus did the last fruits of the Hilton Patent decay and perish; thus were the angry broils of forty years composed. The proprietors of the Patent had, after all, profited little or nothing by the attempted appropriation of Piscataqua lands. The Massachusetts were in the end compelled to disgorge the purloined jurisdiction they had so uneasily obtained and kept, and thus retributive justice was at last meted out to all actors in the transaction.
It was the desire of Massachusetts Bay to include the Piscataqua region within her limits and to secure there a good neighborhood of " honest men," which led her magistrates to effect, through their friend, Captain Thomas Wiggin, in 1633, a purchase and transfer of the Hilton Point Patent to the Puritan Lords and Gentlemen of Shrewsbury, whose successors in 1641, in accordance, we suppose, with the original understanding, made a full sub- mission of the Patent to Massachusetts jurisdiction. At the same time, in furtherance of the same general design, a statutory construction was put upon the Patent, by which it was split into two distinct portions, and the lower or Squamscott portion was violently stretched, so as to cover the whole southern bank of the river from Squamscott Falls to its mouth.
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The Hilton Patent having thus served its political and religious purpose, was never fully enforced. Large portions of its territory were granted to Dover, and a still larger part was retained by Strawberry Bank, and in the conclusion of the whole matter, the Squamscott patentees took but trifling advantages from the distorted misconstruction of their grant.
The long controversy was no doubt of trifling importance, but whoever will study it attentively will see displayed such a stubborn conflict between patentee and planter, such a hot contention between Royalist and Round- head, such a fierce hatred between Puritan and Churchman, and at all times such political sagacity and vigor of thought, as make the story of the Hilton Point Patent the most instructive, if not entertaining, in the early annals of New Hampshire.
Until a very recent date, the only original materials for a real history of New Hampshire during the first half century of its existence, available to students, were the scanty relics of town and county records, and a few documents preserved among the archives of Massachusetts, or in private hands, together with some casual hints and prejudiced notices of the Piscataqua to be found among the historians of Plymouth and the Bay.
GOVERNORS OF MASSACHUSETTS DURING THE UNION.
At the time of the union, Richard Bellingham was governor of Massachu- setts. He was re-elected in 1654 and again in 1665, serving eight years for his last term. He died Dec. 7, 1672, aged eighty years.
John Winthrop, a former governor, was re-elected in 1642, 1643, 1646 1647 and 1648. He died Match 26, 1649, aged sixty-one years.
John Endicott was elected governor in 1644, 1649, 1651, 1652, 1653 and every year for ten years from 1655. He died March 15, 1665, aged seventy- six years.
Thomas Dudley was elected governor in 1645, and was re-elected in 1650. He died July 13, 1653, aged seventy-seven years.
John Leverett was elected governor in 1673 and served six years. He died March 16, 1679.
Simon Bradstreet, elected governor in 1679, served until 1685. Ile was again elected in 1689 and served three years. He died March 27, 1697, aged 94 years.
During the union with Massachusetts, Hampton was represented at the General Court at Boston by Lieutenant William Hayward,* William English, William Estow,* Jeoffrey Mingay, Roger Shaw, Mr. Anthony Stanyon,* Henry Dow, Mr. Robert Page, Lieutenant Christopher Hussey, Mr. William Fuller, Mr. Samuel Dalton,* Captain William Gerrish, Mr. Thomas Marston, Mr. Joshua Gilman.
The magistrates of the town, aside from the representatives, were William Wakefield, John Cross, and James Davis.
* Magistrates.
EN SU
GOVERNOR WINTHROP.
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Strawberry Bank, or Portsmouth, was represented at the General Court by Mr. James Parker, Mr. Stephen Winthrop, Mr. Brian Pendleton, * Mr. Henry Sherburne,* Mr. Nathaniel Fryer,* Mr. Elias Stileman,* Captain Richard Cutt,* Mr. Rich. Martyn,* John Cutt, of whom Brian Pendleton and Richard Cutt were longest in service.
The magistrates of the town, during the union aside from the representa- tives, were Francis Williams, Thomas Warnerton, Ambrose Gibbons, Renald Fernald and Thomas Daniell.
Dover was represented at the General Court by Edward Starbuck, Mr. William Hilton,* Captain Thomas Wiggin,* William Heath, William Wal- dron,* William Furbur, Lieutenant John Baker, Mr. Valentine Hill,* Major Richard Waldron,* Lieutenant Richard Cooke, Lieutenant Peter Coffin, Anthony Nutter. Aside from these, the magistrates were Edward Hilton, William Waldron, George Smith, William Pomfret, John Hale, Thomas Clarke and Edward Colcord. Richard Waldron, first elected in 1654, was re-elected twenty-three consecutive times, twenty-five times in all, being in command of a force during the King Philip war in 1676. In 1679 he was elected from Kittery. During eight sessions he was chosen speaker.
Exeter sent no representative. Robert Smith and John Legatt were magistrates.
* Magistrates.
CHAPTER III.
KING PHILIP'S WAR, 1675-1678.
LONG PEACE - CHARACTER OF INDIANS - EDWARD RANDOLPH - FRENCH -DUTCH-NEW YORK-MOHAWKS -CAUSES OF WAR - INDIAN VICES- SACHEM PHILIP -MOUNT HOPE -RUM-INDIAN SHORTCOMINGS - LIC- ENSING THE SALE OF ARMS - LOSS TO THE COLONIES - LOSS TO THE INDIANS - PHILIP'S STRAITS -TERMS OF PEACE - FRENCH ESTIMATE OF INDIAN CHARACTER- KINDNESS TO QUAKERS - INJUSTICE TO INDIANS -INDIAN YOUTH ANXIOUS FOR WAR - SQUANDO - INSULT TO SQUAW - ATTITUDE OF PENACOOKS AND COCHECOS -PRAYING INDIANS -THEIR LOSS - MURDER OF THEIR OLD PEOPLE -INDIAN DEPREDATIONS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE -PEACE - DEATII OF PHILIP -SIMON, ANDREW, AND PETER - WAR IN MAINE - TREACHERY AT MAJOR WALDRON'S GARRISON -EXPEDITION TO OSSIPEE-MOHAWKS WARRING ON FRIENDLY INDIANS DEFEAT AT BLACK POINT - MAJOR ANDROS AND PEACE - INDEPENDENCE OF THE COLONISTS -ST. CASTINE.
Sºº OON after the jurisdiction of Massachusetts was extended over New Hampshire and the coast of western Maine, a combination had been effected between the New England colon- ies for offensive and defensive purposes. According to its provisions, the quota of men and money required from each of the members of the combination was strictly determined in case of war ; and it had all the advantages of a centralized, although a republican, government. It made possible the defeat and extermination of Philip and his followers.
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