USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, Volume I > Part 11
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In reference to improvement of the Land by Tillage, Our soil is gen- erally so barren & ye winters so extremely cold & long, that there is not provision enough raised to supply ye inhabitants. Many wherof were in ye late Indian war so impoverished, their houses & estates being destroyed «& they (& others) remaining still so incapacitated for ye improvement of ye land (several of ye youth being killed also) that they even grone under ye tax or Rate assessed for that service, which is yet (great part of it) unpaid to this day.7
7 Sanborn's New Hampshire, pp. 79, 80; N. H. State Papers, Vol. XVII, 7P. 542-3, Cf. Belknap's Hist. of N. H., Farmer's edition, pp. 94-5.
Chapter VI GOVERNOR CRANFIELD'S ADMINISTRATION
Chapter VI
GOVERNOR CRANFIELD'S ADMINISTRATION.
Edward Cranfield Succeeds Major Waldern as Governor-Opposition Curbed -Authority of Cranfield-His Report to the King-Differences between the Planters and Robert Mason-Readiness to Fight for Property- Report of the Governor to Lords of Trade-Dissolution of the Assembly -Insurrection of Edward Gove-His Trial and Barbarous Sentence- Gove Imprisoned in Tower of London-His Property Confiscated- Pardoned after Three Years-Changes in the Council Made by Cran- field-Suits against Landowners-Petition Carried to the King by Nathaniel Weare-Imprisonment of William Vaughan-Letter of Vaughan-Arrest of Rev. Joshua Moody-Attempt to Impose Episcopal Rites upon Congregationalists-Enforced Taxation-Charges against Cranfield-His Deposition and Character.
T HE Lords of Trade and Plantations made a report to the king, January 13, 1681-2, on the state of the colony in New Hampshire, in which they say, that "we doe find the Publick Acts and Orders (the most part of them) soe unequall, incon- gruous and absurd, and the methods whereby the Councill and Assembly have proceeded in ye establishment of the same soe disagreeable to the powers and directions of yr Majestys said Commission" that they recommended the appointment of "some fit and able person" to settle affairs in that place. The de- cision, doubtless, was reached through the influence of Robert Mason after his return to London. He despaired of accomplish- ing anything by himself and was irritated by the oppositions of the president and council at Portsmouth. A governor from England, with enlarged powers and authority, might bring to terms the leading spirits of New Hampshire and enable Mason to collect his quit rents. Accordingly on the ninth of May, 1682, Edward Cranfield was commissioned Lieutenant Governor and Commander in Chief of New Hampshire. Little is known of his previous life and family. He is thought to have been great-grandson of Edward Cranfield, who married Elizabeth, daughter of William Parker, Lord Monteagle. He sold some office he had in the home government, with the hope of enrich-
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ing himself in his provincial office of high-sounding title. By a deed Mason surrendered one-fifth part of the quit rents, which were in imaginary prospect, to the king, and thus perhaps ob- tained the appointment of Cranfield, who was further secured as an agent of Mason by mortgaging the whole province to him for a period of twenty-one years, as security for the payment of one hundred and fifty pounds annually, for seven years. With this security and with the fines and forfeitures which had already accrued to the crown and which might afterward arise Cranfield felt that his financial condition would be improved. Disappoint- ment awaited him. No rents were collected and the fines and forfeitures had been already paid out by the treasurer.
Cranfield was instructed to repair to the province as speedily as convenient and there to call together the council to hear his commission read and to administer oath of allegiance to mem- bers of the council, judges and justices of the peace. If any members of the council refused to take the oath, their vacancies were to be filled by Cranfield, so that there should be seven members. Proclamation was to be made of his having been commissioned Lieutenant Governor and Commander in Chief. Richard Waldern and Richard Martyn, who were under accusa- tions "of diverse high crimes & misdemeanors," were to be suspended as members of the council, until said accusations. were looked into. He was also charged to take care that future meetings of the council should not be held at ordinaries, or taverns, and that not "any part of the revenue levied for defraying the charge of the government should be spent or dispersed in feasting or public entertainments." This was based on complaints of previous misconduct of such sort, on the part of the council. He was instructed to report quarterly as to proceedings of the council and especially as to disposal of public money. He was to notify the assembly that all laws and orders: made by virtue of commission, dated September 18, 1679, be repealed and annulled, and he with the council and assembly was to make such laws as were proper. He was to care that all planters and their Christian servants be provided with arms,. mustered and trained, to report imports and exports, and to encourage especially the Royal African Company of England, to assist neighboring plantations in case of distress and to call
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· neighbors to assistance in case of depredations by the Indians.
His commission gave him authority to suspend any of the members of the council, if he should find just cause for so doing, and if the number of councilors should ever be less than seven, to fill the vacancies by his own appointment out of the principal freeholders and inhabitants of the province, any members of the council that should be suspended or displaced being incap- able thereby of serving as members of the assembly. Cranfield also was given power to negative, or veto, the making and passing of all laws, statutes and ordinances, and to prorogue and dissolve general assemblies, to establish as many courts of judicature and justice as he thought proper and to appoint judges, justices of the peace, sheriffs and other necessary officers, to pardon offenders and remit fines before or after sentence given, treason and wilful murder only excepted, and to grant reprieves even in such cases, until the king's pleasure might be learned. The rest of the commission is very similar to that given to John Cutt, first president of the council, and the in- structions concerning the claims of Mason were the same, in substance. In addition to his other titles Cranfield was made vice-admiral. The councilors named in his commission were Robert Mason, proprietor, Major Richard Waldern, Thomas Daniel, William Vaughan, Richard Martyn, John Gilman, Elias Stileman, Job Clements, Walter Barefoot and Richard Chamber- lain. All but the last two had been of the previous council.
Waldern and Martyn were suspended at once after the publication of the commission, October fourth, because of accu- sations made against them, the nature of which may be seen in the depositions previously cited. Six weeks later they were restored to their seats in the council, the accusations being deemed unproved. The council thereupon ordered an assess- ment of five hundred pounds and made a present of one-half of the amount to Cranfield. Thus there were mutual concessions, and the Governor seemed to be well pleased and reported to the Plantation office that, "Mr. Mason has much misrepresented the whole matter, the place not being so considerable, nor the people so humored as he reports. There are but four small towns, all impoverished by the expense of the last Indian war, and several hundred pounds in debt on that account. I find
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them very loyal to His Majtie & willing to do what is within their reach for ye upholding of ye Government, but no way capable of doing so much as hath been pretended. And instead of being ready to own Mr. Mason as their proprietor they are very slow to admit of any person except their Sovereign Lord the King to be their Lord Proprietor & However they might at first complement in that matter, few or none (so farre as I can learn) are willing to comply (some few Quakers & such like excepted & those upon no other terms than upon ye conditions of his recovering ye whole) but ye general desire of ye Province is for a determination of ye case by Law, so that I humbly conceive Mr. Mason hath taken wrong measures for his pro- cedure. He concluded upon ye laying aside of Mr. Waldron & Martin & discountenancing ye Minister of ye principal place in ye Province that he should have frighted ye People into a compliance with him, but finds himself mistaken. Wheras had he desired & obtained an order for a Tryall upon ye place, he had been in my opinion one step nearer ye end of his business than he now is .. .. I have been not fairly treated by Mr. Mason & Chamberlain for refusing to gratifie them .... Had I yielded to such violent courses as they urged, I should have greatly amazed, disturbed and prejudiced the people and in no ways promoted His Majties interest & Honour, which is so every way superior to the satisfaction of any private person." Then he goes on to criticize the judgment and abilities of Mr. Cham- berlain, thinking him poorly qualified for his office and much dejected through poverty. "Touching ecclesiastical matters, the attempt to settle the way of the Church of England I perceive will be very grievous to the people, however Mr. Mason asserted that their inclinations were much that way. I have observed them to be very diligent and devout in attending on that mode of worship which they have been brought up in." Thus Cranfield writes at the beginning of his administration, but soon he changes his mind and adopts with emphasis the opinions of Mason and Chamberlain. Indeed he far outdoes them in the harshness of measures proposed. It is noticeable that some succeeding governors of New Hampshire, as Usher and Bello- mont, entered upon the duties of their office with the same conciliatory spirit, taking the part of the council and assembly, and that they also soon recognized their mistake and reported
C
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. that the people of New Hampshire were disloyal and wanted no government but their own. Cranfield has been represented as a harsh, unjust and tyrannical ruler; it seems that he was goaded to harsh speeches and severe measures by the obstinate spirit and conduct of those who were determined to resist the orders of the king and not to recognize any claims of Robert Mason. In the same letter Cranfield adds that the old record book has been found, in which it appears that "in Capt. John Mason's life time ye inhabitants being wholly without govern- ment, were forced to enter into a combination to govern them- selves by His Majtes laws as well as they could, -... Also they petitioned ye Massachusetts to take them under their govern- ment when they found by experience that they could not govern themselves. And as for taxes, the people own that ye Massa- chusetts have expended several thousand pounds for them in ye Indian war, that they never had any compensation for." This also shows that Cranfield entered upon his administration with a disposition to listen to the opinions and wishes of the people of New Hampshire, but they wanted more than he or the king could grant. They were as stubborn as he and would have exercised power as arbitrarily, had they possessed it. It was a conflict between pecuniary interests, and what will not men in general do for the defense of their property? What will not greed do to gain more? It may be well to state here as clearly as possible the difference in point of view between che claimants in this long Masonian controversy. The planters of New Hamp- shire stood upon their natural rights; Mason upon his legal rights. The former pleaded that they had purchased their lands of the Indians, a statement that was true only in part, and, moreover, the prices paid were no fair equivalent for the lands received; Mason pleaded that the lands had been granted to him as proprietor by the king of England, who obtained them by discovery and conquest of his subjects, and such a claim had long been allowed by feudal law. The planters truly stated that the wilderness had been subdued and brought into a state of cultivation by their own unassisted labors and that Mason had done nothing for the province; Mason, on the other hand, asserted that his grandfather had built houses and cleared lands at Little Harbor and Strawberry Bank and had expended altogether twenty thousand pounds in the colonization of the
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province, to which the reply was that most of this was expended at Newichawannock (South Berwick) in the province of Maine. The planters argued that they had defended their lands and homes against the Indian enemy, at great cost of property and life, and without any assistance from the heirs of Mason, to which there could be no reply. Another argument of the planters was that they had held uninterrupted possession of their lands for fifty years, no quit rents having been demanded during that time; and the reply was that the death of Capt. John Mason, the unfaithfulness of his stewards and servants, the troublous times in England and the youthfulness of his immediate heirs had prevented the pressing of just claims, but that again and again the king and highest legal authority of England had admitted the justice of Mason's claims. According to the laws of England the settlers were squatters on lands belonging to Mason; according to natural law the settlers had a better right than the king of England to the soil they cultivated. What reason is there, in the natural fitness of things, that William the Conqueror should own and distribute as he chose all the con- quered estates of England? What natural right had the king of England to lands in America, simply because some of his sub- jects had discovered the same? Such assumed rights were founded on laws made by the rich and powerful for their own convenience and pleasure. Theirs was the right of might, lording it over weakness and ignorance of the many.
An anecdote may illustrate the position of the New Hamp- shire farmers. An Irishman was found, one Sunday morning, poaching on a Scotchman's estate, and was ordered off by the Scotchman, who claimed that the land and all thereon belonged to himself. "And how did you get it?" asked Pat. "I inherited it from my father," was the reply. "And how did he get it?" Pat again asked. "He inherited it from his father," "And how did he get it?" Pat continued to ask and pressed the Scotchman back to his earliest known forebear, who, as he said, fought for it and thus grounded original rights. "Well, bedad," said Pat, "I am ready to fight you for it." Thus he would establish as just a claim as the Scotchman had. Just so the planters of New Hampshire were ready to fight for their lands with such weapons as they could use, delays, evasions, misinterpretations, refusals to obey royal orders, legal technicalities, imprisonments
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and fines when they could impose such. Only a few, like Wal- dern and Martyn, had the courage and wisdom to come out boldly and say, The lands are ours by purchase, conquest, de- fense, improvement and long use, and the king has no rights here whatever. Such men were revolutionists without knowing it. They stood on natural rights, interpreted by reason, and natural rights should always triumph over merely human laws. Their mistake was in professing to be loyal to the king and laws of England at the same time that they spoke and acted against such authority, but their inability to back up their own just claims by force of arms made it necessary to practice the arts of diplomacy. They saw that the system of land tenure that obtained in England would not do for the colonies in America, that the history of Ireland ought not to be repeated here. It took another century to open the eyes of the rulers of England to such truths.
The good humor of Cranfield was of short duration. Only four weeks after the letter above cited he wrote to the Lords of Trade and Plantations as follows :
My Lords, let it not seem strange to your Lordships that in so short a time the matters in this paper appears so different from any former discourse to your Lordships from Boston, which in honour to his Majesty and vindication of my sincerity to his service I take the first opportunity to lay before your Lordships as follows. All in the late Council together with many of the chief Inhabitants in this province are part of the Grand Combination made up of Church members of Congregational Assemblies throughout the colonies of New England, and by that they are so strictly obliged that the interest or prejudice of any One, if considerable, effects and influences, the whole party and thus it has fallen out here.
About August last the president and Council of this province admitted the ketch George, a Scotch vessel sailed with Scotsmen, belonging to one Jeffray a Scotsman a church member here, to enter and trade contrary to the 12th of the King. About fourteen days after my arrival Mr. Randolph having advice hereof seized her and Cargo for his Majesty, upon which I ordered her to be stopped and appointed a Court for a tryal, where Mr. Randolph appearing on his Majesty behalf insisted upon the breach of the Acts of trade and prayed condemnation thereupon. But the Jury, in which were four Church Members and leading men, although nothing was offered in barr of Judgment, find against the King and give Jeffray costs of Court against Mr. Randolph. Upon this I have been obliged to take new measures and in the first place have turned Stileman, Captain of the ffort, a Church Member, out of his Command for suffering the Ketch to pass the ffort before the tryall against my express order to the con-
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trary, and I have directed Mr. Randolph to prosecute with all vigour all persons concerned in contriving the escape and also to attaint the jury for bringing a false verdict, so that I am now upon this just occasion engaged to follow this matter as far as Law and the integrity of Juries will admit, and to lay aside persons whom I find declining in this so great a violation of Law & Justice. Upon my receiving his Majty Com- mission for the Government of this province your Lordships were of opinion that the irregular trade so often complained of by Mr. Randolph in his papers to your Lordships would be totally discouraged.
The sight of the Lark ffrigat in their harbour put an awe upon them, but so long as their preachers exercise a countermanding power to his Majty authority and oppose all persons and things which receive not a sanction from them I am in much doubt where to find honest and fitt persons enough in this small Colony to administer Justice, serve in Juries and execute the several parts in Government. I cannot omitt to acquaint your Lordships of one particular case lately practiced in the courts of this province. A Gentleman brought his action upon a bond against a Church member. The case was so plain that the Jury found for the plaintiff, but the court would not admit of that verdict but gave damages against them. Thus their preachers support their common interest.
Cranfield then goes on to ask for authority to remove all such preachers as oppose and disturb the peace of this govern- ment and advises the same method in the treatment of the Bostoners and those of the province of Maine. He adds that the jury in case of the ketch George were so far frightened by proceedings against them that after the vessel was out of reach they asked to amend their verdict and to find for the king, which request was granted. He says that juries would go against law and evidence, if they did not fear punishing their purses more than burdening their consciences.1
In place of Stileman Walter Barefoot was made captain of the fort, and the former was deposed from his seat in the council. The continual effort on the part of Randolph to enforce the Navigation laws offended the merchants, who wanted to get rich faster than those laws allowed. Their conduct was of the same nature as smuggling, and their only excuse was that almost everybody in the colonies did so, which was, doubtless, true.
On the twentieth of January, 1683, the assembly convened, and the governor and council offered a bill for the support of government, which was not approved. Neither did their bills
1 N. H. State Papers, Vol. VII, pp. 575-78.
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meet the approval of Cranfield. The result was that he dis- solved the assembly, according to the authority conferred in his commission. This was something new in their history. They began to see more clearly that if Cranfield could suspend mem- bers of the council at will and dissolve the assembly at will, and appoint whomsoever he would as judges and other officers, then the whole machinery of government was in his hands, legislative, executive and judicial. His was practically an unlim- ited and arbitrary monarchy, with this exception, that he had no obedient army to enforce his will upon the people. Edward Gove of Hampton was a member of the assembly at the time it was dissolved. Later it was pleaded in extenuation of his conduct that Cranfield cursed and swore at the assembly and threatened them if they refused to vacate laws previously made. Because Gove seemed to oppose such unwarrantable proceed- ings, Cranfield questioned him before the council and assembly and threatened to punish him at Common Pleas and indict him at Whitehall. This statement has the appearance of being exag- gerated. But Gove was highly indignant and conceived in his agitated and distracted mind an armed revolt against such arbitrary and tyrannical rule. Hannah Gove, in her petition for pardon of her husband, said that he was subject to a distemper of lunacy or some such like from his youth, as his mother was before him, and that he never had any intention of disloyalty, when rational, but the contrary, as he would have pleaded at his trial, had he been himself. Sergeant John Stephens, aged seventy, testified in 1683, that Edward Gove some years since was in a strange distemper and was watched night and day by said Stephens. Sometimes Gove had to be bound hand and foot, and in 1659 the court at Hampton recognized that he needed a guardian. All this was testified in order that Gove might be pardoned; yet it was, doubtless, true that he was of unbalanced mind at times, though evidently a man of ability and of some wealth.
He visited Dover, Portsmouth and Exeter, conversing with some of the leading men, trying to persuade them to join him in an insurrection. All spoke to him against the movement, yet he was as persistent as John Brown was in later times and as sure of success. Cranfield wrote to the Lords of Trade and Plantations that "Edward Gove hath made it his business in
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the several towns within this province to stir the people up to a rebellion, giving out that he had a sword by his side and would not lay it down until he had the government in his hands." He believed that Gove "had been set on by some of the Massa- chusetts colony," and Randolph declared his opinion that it was the intention of Gove and other conspirators to put to death both Cranfield and Mason. This must be regarded as one of the exaggerations of prejudice. In private letters Gove after- ward declared that he had a party at his house at which the usual beverage was served and that he had not slept for twelve days and nights about that time,-another exaggeration. The governor sent messengers to Hampton and Exeter, with war- rants for the constables, requiring the arrest of Gove, and or- dered the militia of the whole province to be in readiness. Gove eluded the constables for a little while, went to Exeter and returned with a party of twelve men, principally of that town. They were mounted and armed with swords, pistols and guns. With sword drawn and a trumpeter sounding the cavalcade rode into Hampton. Here they were all arrested by the militia, except the trumpeter, who made his escape and for whom a hue and cry was sent throughout the province. This trumpeter was Nathaniel Ladd of Exeter, for whose pardon his wife, Elizabeth Ladd, and her mother, Elizabeth Gilman, offered a petition. Those arrested with Gove were John Gove, his son, William Healey, John Wadleigh, Joseph Wadleigh and Robert Wadleigh, sons of Robert Wadleigh and the oldest only twenty years of age. Their parents testified in a petition that their sons met Gove by accident and went with him, not knowing his treason- able intent. Others arrested were Thomas Rawlins, Mark Baker and John Sleeper. Some of the men were servants of Gove and went with him by his order. None understood what his design was.
They were arrested the twenty-seventh of January and were brought to trial February first. The grand jury was composed of John Hinckes, Robert Elliot, John Moulton, Edward Gilman, Thomas Marston, John Redman, Samuel Wentworth, William Sanborn, Nathaniel Bachelder, Moses Gilman, John Sherburne, William More, Richard Sloper, John Roberts, Henry Moulton, Joseph Canney, Mathias Haynes, Job Clements, Joseph Beard, Samuel Haynes and Morris Hobbs. These made presentment
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