USA > New Hampshire > History of New Hampshire, from its first discovery to the year 1830; with dissertations upon the rise of opinions and institutions, the growth of agriculture and manufactures, and the influence of leading families and distinguished men, to the year 1874; > Part 4
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Odiorne's Point, where Thompson and his party settled, is a peninsula, in the town of Rye. It is at all times nearly sur- rounded by water, and in the highest tides actually becomes an island. Here the colonists reared the first house and other structures necessary for labor and defence. They manufactured salt for the curing of fish, cultivated the land and traded with the natives.
The Hiltons went up the Piscataqua eight miles, to a place which they called "the Neck," a point of land formed by a tributary entering the principal river. The land was then cov- ered, to the water's edge, with dense forests, beneath whose shades wild beasts had their lairs. The rivers abounded with fish and fowls. Here the brothers resolved to make their home. The place was called, successively, Hilton's Point, Cocheco, Northam and Dover.
Thompson, the overseer of the settlement at Little Harbor, became discontented ; and, in the Spring of 1624, removed to
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an island in Massachusetts Bay, which has ever since borne his name. .
These two plantations owe their existence to ardent enthu- siasm, extravagant expectations, and liberal contributions of Gorges and Mason. For several years they made little pro- gress ; and the expense of maintaining them far exceeded the income they yielded to the proprietors.
The new movement that was made in 1631, in the settlement of "Strawberry Bank," advanced slowly ; and, after the lapse of thirty years from the arrival of the first settlers in the Piscataqua, Portsmouth contained only fifty or sixty families. The Indians in the vicinity remained at peace for several years, and quietly hunted the wild beasts of the woods, whose skins they bartered with the settlers for such goods as they needed. In 1628 the colonists were alarmed at meeting the natives, in the forest near Dover, hunting with fire-arms. Upon inquiry, they learned that they had been sold by Thomas Morton, who had gathered around him a dissolute company of disorderly persons and out- laws, at a place since called Braintree, but named by him "Merry Mount." Morton was seized by the magistrates of Plymouth, and sent a prisoner to England. Future generations were made bitterly to rue the day when this heedless wretch first put fire- arms into the hands of the savages. It does not appear that Mason and Gorges made any effort to extinguish the title of the natives to the lands they occupied. These roaming red men were not supposed by them to have any rights which white men were bound to respect. Those who actually occupied the soil thought differently. Hon. Charles Bell, in his semi-centennial discourse before the New Hampshire Historical Society, says : "There is abundant evidence still surviving to show that every rood of land occupied by the white men, for a century after they sat down at Piscataquack, was fairly purchased from the Indian proprietors and honestly paid for."
In 1638, a settlement was begun on Swamscot river, by a small company of immigrants from Massachusetts, who had been ban- ished on account of heresy. Religious opinions then controlled politics and legislation. The questions of creeds were then more prominent than those of rights. It was oftener asked, What shall I believe ? than, What shall I do ?
The leader of these Massachusetts exiles, John Wheelwright, was a man of superior endowments and high culture. He was educated for the ministry, but adopted Puritan opinions ; hence he emigrated to Boston, in 1636, three years after "the learned, mild and catholic Cotton," who immediately became, according to Puritan usage, a teacher in the church of which Mr. Wilson was pastor. Mr. Wheelwright was at once made a freeman in
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the state, and a member of that Boston church which was styled "the most glorious church in the world, both for their faith and order and their eminent gifts of utterance and knowledge." It was agreed that the occupants of Mount Wallaston, now Quincy, which was deemed an appendage of Boston, should constitute a separate church, and that Mr. Wheelwright should become their pastor.
A new actor now appears upon the stage. In 1634, Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, wife of William Hutchinson, came to Massachusetts from Alford, near Boston, England. She was a woman of su- perior endowments and held peculiar religious views. She says : " After our teacher, Mr. Cotton, and my brother, Mr. Wheelwright, were put down, there was none in England that I durst hear." She therefore followed Mr. Cotton to America. Mr. Wheel- wright soon followed her and became her disciple. Mrs. Hutch- inson came in the very vessel which bore a copy of the royal commission for calling in the charters of the colonies. At such a time local divisions, for any cause, were dangerous. Win- throp thus alludes to her, in his history: "One, Mrs. Hutch- inson, a member of the church of Boston, a woman of ready wit and bold spirit, brought over with her two dangerous errors ; Ist, that the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a justified person ; 2d, that no sanctification can help to evidence to us our justifi- cation. From these errors grew many branches ; as first, our union with the Holy Ghost, so as a Christian remains dead to every spiritual action, and hath no gifts nor graces, other than such as are in hypocrites ; nor any other sanctification than the Holy Ghost himself." This belief was called "Antinomianism." Mrs. Hutchinson soon formed a powerful party, who favored her views. She became a bold and caustic critic of the clergy who opposed her views, and denounced them as under a "covenant of works." She held assemblies twice a week, for a time, for those of her own sex, at which nearly a hundred hearers were in attendance. Governor Vane adopted her views. All the mem- bers of the Boston church, except five, became her followers. Among these five were Mr. Wilson, the pastor, and Winthrop, late governor of the colony. The country towns opposed her. The controversy became fierce ; friends were estranged and the public peace endangered. When Wilson, the pastor, rose to speak, Mrs. Hutchinson and her partisans rose and walked out. Mr. Cotton was the colleague of Wilson, and was the favorite of the new zealots. An Indian war was impending ; and when a force was ordered to take the field for the salvation of the settle- ments, the Boston men refused to be mustered, because they suspected the chaplain, who had been designated by lot to ac- company the expedition, of being under "a covenant of works."
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The colony was reduced to a state bordering on anarchy, by the eloquence and zeal of one factious woman. Every church, in every town of Massachusetts, and the "Great and General Court" were divided and distracted by the abstract questions that grew out of this discussion.
"On the occasion of these dissentions in the churches," the General Court proclaimed a fast. Mr. Wheelwright was ap- pointed to preach the sermon. The excitement was increased. The contending factions became more violent. Mr. Wheelwright was charged by his opponents with the heresy of "antinomianism." A majority of the church were his partisans ; it would not, there- fore, be for the public good that they should try the offender. The elders and civil magistrates succeeding in bringing the ac- cused before the General Court, it was decided that in case of "manifest heresy, dangerous to the state," the Court could pro- ceed without the previous action of the church. Mr. Wheel- wright was arraigned, heard and adjudged guilty of sedition and contempt. The Boston church petitioned, and this act was re- garded as an insolent contempt of court, to be punished by dis- franchisement and banishment. Next a synod of all the churches was called to settle differences. They sat and condemned eighty- two errors of opinion. How marvelous must have been the sub- tlety of those divines to detect so many heresies in "the most glorious church in the world." The Court felt obliged, on ac- count of the public welfare, to disfranchise and banish Mr. Wheelwright. Many of his friends shared his fate. Some re- moved to Rhode Island ; others followed their leader to Exeter. Mrs. Hutchinson, the prime mover of this "constructive trea- son," of course was involved in the general condemnation of her tenets. She is called by one historian "the master-piece of woman's wit;" by another, a woman "of a bold and masculine spirit ;" by another, "the American Jezebel."
It is not probable that, in a heated controversy like this, the blame was entirely on one side. Gov. Winthrop and the other fathers in church and state pleaded that unity of feeling was at that time essential to their very existence. The king stood ready to seize their charter, and no plea at court was stronger than the existence of dissensions on matters of relig- ion. The savages were conspiring for their destruction, and divided counsels and divided forces would ensure their ruin. Mr. Palfrey, himself a Unitarian clergyman and an eminent politician, vindicates the conduct of the Puritans, on the ground that the right of self-defence, in a government, is paramount to all others ; and when the State is imperiled, the rights of indiv- iduals must be sacrificed. Mr. Bancroft leaves the reader to in- fer that he disapproves of the measures of the Puritans with
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reference to Mrs. Hutchinson. He shows that her principles, adopted in Rhode Island, there yielded "the peaceable fruits of righteousness." She, in her new home, so won the hearts of the young men to her views, and by her eloquence and pretended inspiration so moulded the social and political life of the new plantation, that, to the leaders in Massachusetts, it "gave cause of suspicion of witchcraft." It may be doubted whether a more eloquent, persistent and influential woman ever lived. On a wider theatre she would have produced greater results ; in these little colonies she was stronger than the clergy and came near defeating the magistrates.
Mr. Wheelwright and his exiled friends came to Exeter in July, 1638. They determined to make a permanent settlement on the banks of the Swamscot ; accordingly they purchased the land they wished to occupy of the Indian sagamores who then possessed it. For two centuries there has been much discus- sion about an earlier deed given to Mr. Wheelwright, dated May 17, 1629, by four Indian chiefs, then residents within the terri- tory of the Laconia Company. Mr. James Savage, the best authority in early American history that New England has pro- duced, in his appendix to the first volume of Winthrop's History of New England, has presented unanswerable arguments against the genuineness and authenticity of the Wheelwright deed of 1629. Recently, Rev. Dr. Bouton, the State Historian of New Hampshire, has proved beyond a doubt that deed to be a for- gery. In his view, there is not one particle of evidence that Mr. Wheelwright was then, or for several years after, either a visitor or resident in this country. When Mr. Wheelwright came to the Swamscot, in 1636, the Indians seemed to be the only per- sons in the territory who could give any valid title to the soil. Other eminent writers have presented very able arguments in de- fence of the deed. Cotton Mather, writing to George Vaughan, Esq., in 1708, respecting the Indian deed to Wheelwright, says :
" All the wit of man cannot perceive the least symptom of a modern fraud in your instrument. The gentleman whot litt upon it is as honest, upright and pious a man as any in the world; and would not do an ill thing to gain a world. But the circumstances of the instrument itself, also, are such that it could not be lately counterfeited. If it were a forgery, Mr. Wheelwright himself must have been privy to it; but he was a gentleman of the most un- spotted morals imaginable; a man of most unblemished reputation. He would sooner have undergone martyrdom than have given the least conniv- ance to any forgery."
The fraud must have occurred after his death if at all. This will relieve Mr. Wheelwright of all complicity with it.
There was then no representative of the grantor or grantee upon the continent. The Council of Plymouth was dissolved ; Mason, to whom they granted the territory, was dead, and his
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heirs, being minors, did not for the next thirty years after his de- cease renew their claim. The crown had no representative in New England. Had this little handful of men been dropped from the clouds, like rain, upon this wilderness, they could scarcely have been more independent. They had no govern- ment. For one year they were governed by a sense of natural justice. If any form existed, it was a mere verbal agreement. At the close of one year, on the 4th of July, 1639, they solemnly subscribed a written instrument, which they called a "combina- tion." This infant constitution is deeply imbued with Puritan- ism. It shows religion still in the ascendency. As this agree- ment of the settlers of Exeter was the first written constitution in New Hampshire, it deserves to be copied entire. It is as follows :
"WHEREAS it hath pleased the Lord to move the heart of our dread sov- ereign Charles, by the grace of God king, &c., to grant licence libertye to sundry of his subjects to plant themselves in the westerne parts of America, We, his loyal subjects, brethren of the church in Exeter, situate and lying upon the river Piscataqua, with other inhabitants there, considering with ourselves the holy will of God and our necessity, that we should not live without wholesom lawes and civil government among us, of which we are altogether destitute; do, in the name of Christ and the sight of God, com- bine ourselves together to erect and set up among us, such government as shall be, to our best discerning, agreeable to the will of God, professing ourselves subjects to our sovereign lord King Charles, according to the lib- ertyes of our English colony of Massachusetts, and binding ourselves sol- emnly by the grace and help of Christ, and in his name and fear, to submit ourselves to such godly and christian lawes as are established in the realm of England, to our best knowledge, and to all other such laws which shall, upon good grounds, be made and enacted among us, according to God, that we may live quietly and peaceably together, in all godliness and honesty. Mo. 8. D. 4. 1639."
Under this organic law both rulers and subjects were bound by the most solemn oaths which the English language could ex- press, to discharge their respective duties with justice and fidel- ity, in the fear of God. The very next year, Dover and Ports- mouth made similar covenants ; and thus, within two years, three constitutional governments were formed in the infant Republic of New Hampshire.
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CHAPTER XII.
POLITICAL AND PECUNIARY CONDITION OF THE PLANTATION FROM 1631 TO 1641.
In 1629 Captain Mason procured a new patent from the Council of Plymouth, including the large part of the territory called Laconia, previously granted jointly to Mason and Gorges. It is described as extending from "the middle of the Piscataqua up the same to the farthest head thereof, and from thence northwestward until sixty miles from the mouth of the harbor were finished ; also, through Merrimack river to the farthest head thereof, and so forward up into the land westward until sixty miles were finished ; and from thence to cross over land to the end of sixty miles accounted from Piscataqua river, to- gether with all islands within five leagues of the coast." It is impossible to understand why this grant was made, nor to fol- low, intelligibly, the metes and bounds affixed to it. It covers less area than the preceding grant and gives no new privileges to the grantee. Mason and Gorges are said to have divided their former grant between themselves; Gorges taking the un- occupied lands east of the Piscataqua, which he called Maine, and Mason holding, under his new patent, the territory recently granted, which he named New Hampshire, in honor of Hamp- shire or Hants in England, which had been his old home. The settlers within the limits of Mason's patent also divided into Upper and Lower Plantations and procured of the Council pa- tents for their respective territories. To the west-country ad- venturers was assigned "all that part of the river Piscataqua called or known by the name of Hilton's Point, with the south side of said river up to the falls of Swamscot and three miles into the main land for breadth."
This grant was made to Edward Hilton. It included, within its limits, Dover, Durham, Stratham and a part of Newington and Greenland. The London adventurers, with similar prudence, se- cured from the Council a grant "of that part of Laconia on which the buildings and salt-works were erected, situated on both sides of the river and harbor of Piscataqua, to the extent of five miles westward by the sea-coast, then to cross over to- wards the other plantation in the hands of Edward Hilton." This vague description included Kittery, in Maine, and the towns of Portsmouth, Newcastle, Rye, with a part of Newing- ton and Greenland. Captain Thomas Wiggin was appointed agent of the Upper Plantation, and Captain Walter Neal agent
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of the Lower Plantation. About the same time, Humphrey Chadbourne built "the Great House," as it was called, on the bank of the main river, about three miles from its mouth. This plantation had a saw-mill at Newichewannoc falls (now Ber- wick) which Chadbourne, at a later period, managed for them. The English proprietors of these lands sent over several cannon, for the common defence, which their agents planted on Great Island at the mouth of the harbor, on a high rock, about a bow- shot from the shore. Here it was intended to build a fort. It was presumed that "the redoubling noise of these great guns, rolling in the rocks, would cause the Indians to betake them- selves to flight." But they soon learned to distinguish between the harmless roar and
-" the terms of weight
Of hard contents, and full of force urg'd home."
The planters came near to open war on account of the occu- pation of a point of land in Newington by Captain Wiggin, which was equally convenient for the Upper Plantation. Cap- tain Neal threatened, Captain Wiggin persisted, and an appeal to arms was imminent, when mutual friends interposed and ad- justed the dispute. No blood was shed ; and yet, by a negative process adopted by some etymologists, it was called “Bloody Point."
Upon the cessation of hostilities by land, a new foe ap- proached their shores by sea. A famous pirate, named Dixy Bull, rifled the fort at Pemaquid and captured several boats along the shore, thus greatly alarming the settlers on the Piscata- qua. The two plantations united in fitting out four pinnaces and shallops, with forty men, to chase and conquer the pirates. Be- ing joined by a bark, with twenty men, from Boston, they went to Pemaquid in pursuit of the enemy. A storm arose, which scattered Neal's little fleet, like that of Æneas of old, and drove the pirate eastward beyond their pursuit. This Lilliputian navy returned in a shattered condition to the "deep waters " of the Piscataqua. The peril of such an enterprise was greater than that of Minos or Pompey in chasing, in different ages, pirates from the Mediterranean Sea. The next year, 1633, the proprie- tors of the Upper and Lower Plantations adjusted their bound- ary lines, and made compromises where they encroached upon one another. They also laid out the town of Hampton, though no settlement was made there for several years. The company of Laconia ordered these surveys and gave names to the towns, agreeing with Wheelwright that his plantation upon the Swam- scot should be called Exeter. When the agents of these planta- tions were appointed, it was agreed that their "several busi- nesses should be trading, fishing, tillage, building and the mak- ing of salt." These ordinary pursuits did not satisfy Mason
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and Gorges. Their whole fortunes were embarked in these en- terprises and, hitherto, they had received no adequate returns. The colonies were not self-supporting. The proprietors paid their laborers wages, supplied them with provisions, clothes, utensils, medicines, articles of trade, tools for building, hus- bandry and fishing, and stocked their farms with domestic ani- mals of all kinds. Meal was imported from England ; grain from Virginia, which was sent to Boston to be ground. The lands were but slightly improved ; the lakes were unexplored ; no mines were discovered but those of iron, and that was not wrought. Vines were planted but yielded no fruit. The inter- ests of the colonies were declining. The planters sold their betterments to the proprietors, who in the midst of all these discouragements did not
-"bate one jot Of heart or hope; but still bore up and steer'd Right onward."
Mason, with a merchant's hopefulness, made new investments, expecting rich returns in some remote future. Gorges, with a statesman's ambition, saw with his mind's eye, in the long vista of coming years, principalities, dominions, and possibly thrones, for himself and his heirs. Both these worthy gentlemen ex- pected rich treasures from the mountains. The Spaniards had been enriched by the mountains of Mexico and Peru; why should not the mountains of New Hampshire prove equally rich in the precious metals ? The most romantic tales had been cir- culated respecting the natural beauty, fertility and resources of the "North Countrie." There were lovely lakes, noble rivers, " goodlie forests and faire vallies, and plaines fruitfull in corn, vines, chesnuts, wallnuts, and infinite sorts of other fruits." In fact, the country abounded in everything that could delight the eye or please the taste. Gorges himself penned a glowing de- scription of the natural scenery ; the wild beasts that invited the hunter, and "the divers kinds of wholesome fish" that would tempt old Izaak Walton to leave the Elysian fields, if he could " drop a line " to these finny tribes.
In June, 1642, Darby Field, with two Indian guides, first as- cended the White Mountains. In August of the same year another party, led by Thomas Gorges and Richard Vines from Maine, set out, on foot, to explore the "delectable mountains." They penetrated the desert wilderness and climbed the rugged sides of the "White Hills" from the East. They gave a very extravagant and incoherent description of what they saw. Their imaginations ran riot in marvelous inventions. They described them as "extending a hundred leagues, on which snow lieth all the year." On one of these mountains they found a plain of a day's journey (it must have been a Sabbath day's journey),
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whereon nothing grew but moss ; and, "at the further end of this plain, a rude heap of mossy stones, piled up on one another, a mile high, on which one might ascend from stone to stone, like a pair of winding stairs, to the top, where was another level of about an acre with a pond of clear water." The country beyond was said to be "daunting terrible." They named those moun- tains the "CHRYSTAL HILLS." Their provisions failed them be- fore the beautiful lake was reached; and, though they were within one day's journey of it, they were obliged to return home. So the men of that age died without the sight. It is passing strange that men, reputed honest, could make such a wild re- port of regions that required no inventions to make them at- tractive and wonderful. No gold was discovered, though the proprietors confidently expected to find it. Even the colonists were smitten with the "accursed hunger." They neglected agri- culture, the only true source of national wealth, and sought for riches in the sea, the forests and the mountains. The line and the musket were more used than the plow and hoe. During ten years of toil and privation they had hardly encroached at all upon the wilderness.
In 1634 the proprietors appointed Francis Williams governor. " He was a discreet, sensible man, accomplished in his manners, and was very acceptable to the people." Laborers and materials for building, ammunition, military stores, tools of every descrip- tion and all necessary supplies were again forwarded from Eng- land. The first neat cattle imported into the colonies were from Denmark, large in size, yellow in color. Shortly after the ap- pointment of the new governor, the Plymouth Council was re- quired to surrender its charter to the king. The members of the Council in England, nobles and merchant princes, had grown indifferent to its welfare ; Mason and Gorges hoped for greater favors from the king than from the Council of Plymouth. Mason was the open enemy of the charter ; Gorges feebly defended it ; but both these proprietors were willing to take their chance in a lottery for the distribution of the territory of New England. The different provinces, from the Penobscot to the Hudson, were accordingly assigned, by lot, to the twelve living members of the Corporation, and the colonists were left without house or home on the soil they had subdued and cultivated. Enemies and fa- natics at home traduced them ; the corporators abroad deserted them ; the royal party oppressed them. Englishmen above the rank of servants were forbidden to go to New England ; ships bound thither were detained in the Thames, because of "the de- parture of so many of the best, such numbers of faithful, free- born Englishmen and good Christians." A squadron of eight ships was detained by the Privy Council in May, 1638. It is
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