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 5
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said that Hampden and Cromwell were on board this fleet. Thus the foolish king detained at home the axe that was prepared for his own neck. A special commission was appointed by the Crown to govern the New England colonies. The hand of Laud, the Ahithophel of Charles, was in all this, who hoped that by agents of his own nomination he could dictate laws and regulate the church of this new world. The Massachusetts colonists pre- pared for the worst. They were determined to fight for their hearths and homes in the wilderness. "We ought," said min- isters and people, "to defend our lawful possessions, if we are able ; if not, to avoid and protract."
The charter was annulled in 1635. By this act the English- men of Massachusetts, and those colonies of New Hampshire that held land by their grants, had no rights and no property there. Massachusetts and New Hampshire belonged, by lot, to Gorges, Mason and the Marquis of Hamilton. The colonists, of course, were greatly alarmed, but not injured. The royal power was waning ; the king could not execute his own decrees ; the church could not inflict its own penalties. The rack, the dungeon and the scaffold, those bloody steps that lead up to the temple of liberty, were fast going into desuetude. Their work was done. The colonies lived on, under their own charter, which was a royal grant, distinct from that of the Council of Plymouth, as though "the great swelling words of vanity" uttered in West- minster Hall were but the lying oracles of a worthless idol. "The Lord frustrated the design" of their enemies. Mason was the chief instigator of these assaults of state and church upon Massachusetts. His sudden death near the close of this year of trials weakened the power of the accusers. Gorges cared not to aid them. Mason, some time before his death, be- sides retaining, as he supposed, all his former grants, purchased of Gorges a portion of Maine. It lay, three miles in breadth, on the northeast side of the Piscataqua, from its mouth to its farthest head, including the saw-mill at Newichewannoc falls. Gorges and Mason had expended their whole fortunes on these plantations. Gorges thus enumerates some of his trials and losses :
"I began when there was no hopes, for the present, but of losse; in that I was yet to find a place, and, being found, it was itselfe, in a manner, dread- full to behoulders; for it seemed but as a desart Wildernesse, replete onely with a kind of savage People and overgrowne trees. So as I found it no mean matter to procure any to go thither, much lesse to reside there; and those I sent knew not how to subsist, but on the provisions I furnished them withall. I was forced to hire men to stay there the winter quarter at ex- tream rates."
This was certainly a hard case for one who hoped to become "lord of the manor" in this new world, and to have a multitude of serfs to do his bidding. Mason fared no better. His im-
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mense estate was swallowed up in outlays, supplies and wages ; and at his death his New Hampshire claim was valued at ten thousand pounds. By will he devised his manor of Mason Hall to his grandson, Robert Tufton, and the residue of New Hamp- shire to his grandson John Tufton, requiring each to take the name of Mason. His widow could not continue the supplies to agents and factors which her husband had furnished, and they divided the goods and cattle among themselves, the agents tak- ing the lion's share. Many of the settlers departed, and those who remained kept possession of the lands and buildings and claimed them for their own.
Mason and Gorges established no government over their col- onies. They had ruled them precisely as a company of laborers is directed, by agents and superintendents. Civil wrongs had no redress but public opinion. The two plantations, for the present being thrown upon their own resources, proceeded to form a constitution for themselves. The inhabitants of Dover, by a written instrument signed by forty-one persons,-the exact number that signed the first written organic law known to his- tory, in the Mayflower,-agreed to submit to the laws of England, and such others as should be enacted by a majority of their num- ber, until the royal pleasure should be known. The date of the Portsmouth "combination" is uncertain. Some time in 1640 the inhabitants of that plantation entered into a political coven- ant and chose Francis Williams, who had been sent over by the proprietors for that purpose, governor, and Ambrose Gibbins and Thomas Warnerton assistants.
The first settlements at Hampton were made under the aus- pices of the Massachusetts colony. The place was called by the Indians Winnicunnet. The extensive salt-marsh in the vicinity first attracted the attention of stock raisers. On the third of March 1635-6, the General Court of Massachusetts ordered the settlement of a plantation at Winnicunnet, and authorized Mr. Dumer and Mr. John Spencer "to presse men to build a howse," which was soon after built, and called "the Bound Howse," probably to fix the northern boundary of that state. The site of the house is now in Seabrook, nearly half a mile north of the present line of Massachusetts. The expense of building was to be paid from the treasury of the colony or "by those that come to inhabit there." The architect of the famous house was Nicholas Easton. It was finished in 1636. In 1638, emigrants from Norfolk, England, were permitted by the General Court to settle there, and at this date the plantation contained fifty-six inhabitants.
In 1641, four distinct settlements had been made within the present limits of New Hampshire-Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter
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and Hampton. These were little democracies governed by the people living within the respective limits of each. Hampton was, by its origin, attached to Massachusetts. Portsmouth and Dover were not sufficiently strong to maintain independent gov- ernments. They naturally gravitated to the older colony on the Bay. For about one year the proposed union was discussed by the people ; and finally, on the fourteenth of April, 1641, it was consummated by a legal instrument signed by commissioners in presence of the only legislative body on the continent having even a show of authority for such an act. The new citizens were received with extraordinary favor. The test of church member- ship, as a qualification for the freeman's franchise, was dispensed with in respect to the New Hampshire voters. Her citizens were permitted to vote and hold office without regard to religious quali- fications. They were admitted, also, to equal rights and priv- ileges, political and judicial, with the freemen of Massachusetts. They were exempted from all public charges, except such as should arise among themselves or for their own peculiar benefit. They enjoyed their former liberties of fishing, planting and sell- ing timber. They were allowed to send two deputies to the Gen- eral Court ; and officers were named in the instrument of union, who were authorized to appoint magistrates in the New Hamp- shire towns. After the lapse of a year Exeter joined the new union. This act was probably delayed on account of the sen- tence of banishment which still hung over the head of their re- vered pastor, Mr. Wheelwright. He immediately withdrew from the newly acquired sovereignty of Massachusetts and retired, with a few faithful followers, to Wells, Maine, and there gathered a new church. The government of Massachusetts became at once supreme in New Hampshire and continued in force thirty- eight years. The government of England was too much dis- tracted, at that time, to give any attention to her colonies. The throne was tottering ; the church was rent into sects ; and civil war was about to drench the whole land in fraternal blood. Massachusetts had obstinately refused to surrender her charter, though often required to do so. Under the royal seal she had claims to vast territories yet unoccupied. She the more willingly, therefore, encouraged the union with New Hampshire, because of her constructive title to the soil. One clause in the royal charter bounded her territory by a line drawn from east to west. "three miles to the northward of Merrimack river or of any and every part thereof." This was sufficiently indefinite to make them owners of all the land that joined them, in all the patents of Mason and Gorges. The political marriage of these sister republics was consummated without opposition, for there was no one to forbid the bans.
·
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CHAPTER XIII.
SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE EARLY COLONISTS.
In most of the early settlements in New England families were the basis of the state. Husbands, wives and children emi- grated from fatherland together. So the Pilgrims founded New Plymouth. We find but few allusions to the presence of women in the plantations of Cocheco and Strawberry Bank. Mr. Quint says "the only settlers at Cocheco, in the spring of 1623, were Edward Hilton, William Hilton and Thomas Roberts and their families." Mr. Farmer, in his Memoir of Winthrop Hil- ton, says : "Whether Edward Hilton, at the time of his arrival, was married or single does not appear." It is not probable that many of these colonists brought their wives and children with them. It appears from existing correspondence between them and Capt. Mason, that the proprietors contributed quar- terly to the support of their wives at home. In a letter of Thomas Eyre to Mr. Gibbins, dated May, 1631, this paragraph occurs : "Your wife, Roger Knight's wife, and one wife more, we have already sent you, and more you shall have as you write for them." In a schedule of goods sent to the colonists in 1632, we find "24 children's coates," showing the need of such gar- ments in the infant state. Among the emigrants sent in 1634 there were twenty-two women. In a letter of Ambrose Gibbins to Capt. Mason, dated August 6, 1634, we find the following sentences : " A good husband with his wife to tend cattle and to make butter and cheese will be profitable ; for maids, they are soone gonne in this countrie." These allusions show that do- mestic life was pretty thoroughly established within ten years after the first company came. All the ages repeat the history of the first : " It is not good for man to be alone."
"The earth was sad, the garden was a wild; And man the hermit sighed, till woman smiled."
It is hardly credible that these little communities lived for ten years without some form of worship, still the records of that time make no mention of it. Among the articles sent over in 1633 we find " one communion cup and cover of silver, and one small communion table cloth." In another inventory, near the same date, we find "two service books" and a "psalter." These entries show that "divine service" and "the Holy Com- munion " were deemed essential to their welfare.
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The same agent, Mr. Gibbins, writes to Capt. Mason under date of July 13, 1633, that some of his laborers had neither "meat, money nor clothes." For himself, wife, child and four men, he had but half a barrel of corn, and only one piece of meat for three months. The men were working for four and six pounds a year. The money for wages was also wanting, yet the proprietors were constantly writing that they were incurring great debts and large risks and receiving absolutely nothing in return. It was a hard case both for the proprietors and for the settlers.
Poverty and hardship, however, did not curb the passions of the people. Crimes of the darkest dye were not uncom- mon. Officers, both in church and state, were the slaves of lust and avarice. George Burdet, after holding the position both of governor and minister at Cocheco, was convicted of adultery at Agamenticus ; Capt. John Underhill, governor of that plantation, confessed the same crime. Hanserd Knollys, or Knowles, is called by some historians an Anabaptist and an Antinomian. Winthrop also calls him "an unclean person." In England he was persecuted for non-conformity. In this country he was a zealous Puritan. Thomas Larkham, a church- man, came to Dover in 1640. He admitted to the church "all that offered, though never so notoriously immoral or ignorant, if they promised amendment." He assumed to rule both church and state. Parties were formed by the friends of the two con- tending clergymen. They resorted at first to spiritual, finally to carnal, weapons. A civil war was prevented by the interposi- tion of magistrates from Portsmouth. The two leaders, Knol- lys and Larkham, left the scene of action about the same time. Knollys, in 1640, went into voluntary exile, and his name passed into history with some charges of heresy attached to it. He has found an able vindicator in Rev. Alonzo Quint, who fearlessly maintains that he was neither a Baptist nor an Anti- nomian. Mr. Larkham privately took ship for England, in 1641, to avoid the shame of a scandalous crime which he had committed. Rev. Stephen Bachiler, the founder of Hampton, was accused of bigamy by his third wife whom he left behind him, when in his old age he went to England and took a fourth wife. Thomas Warnerton, who was associated with Gibbins in the government of Strawberry Bank, was guilty of almost every crime possible to a man in his condition. He was killed in a lawless foray upon the Port of Penobscot in Maine, in 1644. At the house of a friend he is said to have drunk "a pint of kill- devil, alias Rhum, at a draught." If the proprietors had sent over less " aqua vitæ," rum, beer and tobacco, the standard of morals, doubtless, would have been higher in the plantations.
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. After the death of Capt. Mason, his property was stolen by his agents. About "one hundred head of great cattle," valued at twenty-five pounds each, were driven to Boston and sold by Capt. Norton who was a thief and a robber. These cattle were "very large beasts of a yellowish color and said to be brought by Capt. Mason from Denmark." After the desertion of the plantation by Capt. Norton, "the rest of the stock, goods and implements belonging to Capt. Mason were made away with by the servants and others."
The worst passions of men often rage in times of the greatest calamities. History teaches us that in times of pestilence, earthquakes and conflagrations, the living rob and plunder the dead and dying ! When penalties are removed, violence and theft prevail. Lawless men always follow the train of civil- ization as it moves forward into the wilderness. Such has been the fact from the first to the last new settlement in America.
CHAPTER XIV.
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EARLY LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS.
Historians, jurists and critics of high authority have main- tained that the colony charter of Massachusetts constituted the first settlers a corporation and gave them no higher powers than are usually granted to such bodies. "They had no authority to inflict capital punishment, to establish courts of probate and ad- miralty, to create a house of representatives, to levy taxes, nor to incorporate towns, colleges, parishes and other like organiza- tions." No political government can exist without these rights ; consequently, from the natural law of self-preservation, they af- firm that the colonists from the beginning assumed these powers and continually exercised them, till their charter was recalled by Charles II., in 1684. It was, say they, a bold step in the Pil- grims to transport their charter across the ocean ; it was a still bolder step to usurp powers which were never delegated to them. Other authors equally able, possibly superior, vindicate the Puri- tans from all these charges and show conclusively, from the charter itself, that they were guilty of no usurpation in establish- ing a firm government beneath the ægis of the royal charter. Prof. Joel Parker, the successor of Story in the Cambridge Law School and, by general consent, the ablest jurist New Hampshire
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has produced, lays down and proves, by very cogent logic, the following proposition :
I. "The charter is not and was not intended to be an act for the incor- poration of a trading or merchants' company merely. But it was a grant which contemplated the settlement of a colony, with power in the incor- porated company to govern that colony."
2. "The charter authorized the establishment of the government of the colony, within the limits of the territory to be governed, as was done by vote to transfer the charter and government."
3. "The charter gave ample power of legislation and of government for the plantation or colony, including power to legislate on religious subjects, in the manner in which the grantees and their associates claimed and exer- cised the legislative power."
Armed with such plenary powers by their charter, they pro- ceeded to exercise them, according to their best judgment, in pro- viding for the political safety and religious welfare of themselves and their posterity.
By the charter, the supreme authority was vested in a gover- nor, a deputy-governor and eighteen assistants, to be chosen by the freemen from their own number, who constituted "the Court of Assistants." The freemen at first constituted the General Court. At their first meeting, in 1630, they voted to delegate the legislative and executive powers to the Court of Assistants. In 1634, in consequence of the great increase of immigrants, the freemen revolutionized their infant democracy and ordered two deputies from each town to represent them in the General Court. These deputies were required to be of the orthodox religion. None but church members could be Freemen. So the church controlled the state. The congregational form of church gov- ernment was established by law. The militia system was among the earliest institutions of the colony. Every male, above six- teen years of age, was required to appear in arms once every month ; at a later date this drill was limited to six days. The inhabited territory was divided into towns, whose magistrates were denominated " Select Men." These miniature states devel- oped a spirit of republican independence and educated the peo- ple to self-government.
The administration of justice was exceedingly simple, direct and efficient. The court of assistants was at first the chief judicial bench. With the rise of counties came county courts, held by magistrates nominated by the freemen and confirmed by the General Court. The assistants exercised the powers of justices of the peace. The jurors were chosen by the freemen. The legal processes were simple and intelligible to all. The practice of holding up the right hand, instead of kissing the bible, was introduced by the Puritans. Slavery was recognized by law. Captives in war, and even insolvent debtors, were sold into servitude. The stocks, pillory and whipping-post were trans-
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ferred from their native land; and even torture was allowed, provided it was not "barbarous and inhuman." Here is a dis- tinction without a difference !
Heresy was punished by excommunication, disfranchisement, banishment and death; the reviling of magistrates and elders, by fines and whipping. The aristocracy, in church and state, was very sacred. Sumptuary laws were enacted against excesses of every kind in food, drink and dress. As early as 1630, the governor discouraged the drinking of toasts. Laws were made against tobacco, immodest fashions, costly apparel and exorbi- tant prices of goods ; but all these rules failed to secure the re- sults sought by the legislators. The morals of the age were relatively high but not absolutely pure. The Roman poet said rightly : "You may expel nature by violence ; but she will return and reign victorious over artificial restraints."
CHAPTER XV.
EARLY LAWS OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
After the union of New Hampshire with Massachusetts, the laws, customs and religion of the larger and older became those of the weaker and younger colony. Dr. Belknap has given an excellent summary of the laws adopted by Massachusetts. John Cotton, one of the first ministers of Boston, an eminent divine who came to the colony in 1633, left the impress of his mind and creed upon the entire system of laws first adopted by the colony. They were founded, chiefly, on the laws of Moses. He maintained "that the government might be considered as a theocracy, wherein the Lord was judge, lawgiver and king; that the laws which He gave Israel might be adopted, so far as they were of moral and perpetual equity ; that the people might be considered as God's people, in covenant with him; that none but persons of approved piety and eminent gifts should be chosen rulers ; that the ministers should be consulted in all mat- ters of religion ; and that the magistrate should have a super- intending and coercive power over the churches." By these principles human opinions were subjected to the civil ruler, and the church and state were indissolubly united. The only safeguard against the worst religious despotism known to his- tory was, that these laws must be adopted by a majority of the
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freemen. The clergy, of course, had a commanding influence in the state, because none were voters but church members ; none were church members but those who had been elected by a majority of the church ; none were propounded but those ex- amined and approved by the elders ; and none were examined but those who were recommended by the pastors and teachers. Here was a hierarchy of unlimited power; but the theatre of its action was small and the props that supported it very weak. Slavery, according to the old Roman law, was pronounced " con- trary to nature," except when the result of capture, in war or for crime. Its alleviations were then those of the Mosaic code. Blasphemy, idolatry, witchcraft, adultery, unnatural lusts, mur- der, man-stealing, false witness, rebellion against parents and conspiracy against the commonwealth were made capital crimes. The drinking of healths and the use of tobacco were forbidden. The intercourse of the sexes was regulated by strict laws. The ceremony of betrothing preceded marriage. Sumptuary laws
regulated dress, equipage and expenditures. Women were ex- pressly forbidden to wear short-sleeved and low-necked gowns ; and men were obliged to cut their hair short, that they might not resemble women. This was an old custom of the Puritans, who, from their close-cropped hair, contrary to the custom of the cav- aliers, who wore long, flowing locks, were called " round-heads." This sobriquet is said to have originated with the queen of Charles I., who, on seeing Mr. Pym, the leader of the Long Par- liament, passing the palace, said to the king, "who is that 'round-headed' man in' the street below?" No person not worth two hundred pounds was allowed to wear gold or silver lace, or silk hood and scarfs. Offences against any of these laws were presentable by the grand jury, and, when not capital in their nature, were punished by fines, imprisonment, the stocks and whipping. In brief, these judicial Solomons undertook to regulate the thoughts, words, deeds, dress and food of every man, woman and child in the colony. The law was designed to be omnipresent. The population of the four settlements in New Hampshire at the period of the union was about one thousand ; that of all New England twenty thousand.
NOTE .- Occasionally we read of some of the customs of the days of the Puritans, which are very interesting. At Dunstable, Mass., in 1651, dancing at weddings was forbidden; in 1660, William Walker was imprisoned a month for courting a maid without the leave of her parents; in 1675, because "there is manifest pride appearing in our streets" the wearing of long hair or periwigs and "superstitious ribbons" was forbidden; also, men were forbidden to "keep Christmas, as it was a Popish custom." In 1677, a "cage" was erected near the meeting-house for the confinement of Sabbath breakers, and John Atherton, a soldier, was fined forty shillings for wetting a piece of an old hat to put into his shoes, which chafed his feet while marching.
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CHAPTER XVI.
EARLY CHURCHES OF NEW HAMPSHIRE.
The energetic proprietors of New Hampshire and Maine were not moved to plant colonies in the wilderness to extend the area of freedom or promote the interests of religion, but to aggran- dize their houses and increase their private fortunes. Mason and Gorges were not democrats but royalists ; not Puritans but Cavaliers ; not Independents but Episcopalians. The men they hired to fell the trees, till the soil, fish, hunt and mine, in the new world, were not exiles for conscience' sake, but from love of gain. No provision was made by masters or servants for the preaching of the gospel. No man cared for their souls. The first churches were formed at Hampton and Exeter. Hampton claims precedence in time ; for, when the place was incorporated as a plantation, in 1635, some of the grantees were already "united together by church government." "The original mem- bers of the church and the first settlers of the town, generally, were Puritans ; many of them were from the county of Norfolk, England, where christians of this class were very numerous." They brought a pastor with them. They soon erected a church of logs, where, literally shrouded "in a dim religious light," they paid their vows to the Most High. The first pastor of this first born church of a new state, and the father of the town, was Rev. Stephen Bachiler, an ancestor, on the mother's side, of Daniel Webster. The settlement at Exeter, the same year, be- gan its existence by the organizing of a church and the found- ing of a state. Eight members of the church of Boston fol- lowed Rev. John Wheelwright in his compulsory exile, and at once formed themselves into the first church of Exeter. These were all Calvinists of the straitest sect. Thus the leaven of Puritanism was hidden in two of the four rising towns of New Hampshire ; and in process of time, through the influence of Massachusetts, the whole lump was leavened. The History of the New Hampshire Churches, by Rev. R. F. Lawrence, gives a graphic account of the origin of the first church in Portsmouth. I will quote a passage: "'Therefore, Honorable and worthy countrymen, ' said Captain Smith to the New Hampshire colo- nists, 'let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you, for it will afford you as good gold as the mines of Potosi, with less hazard and charge, and more certainty and facility.' This
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