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 9
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The first settlers of Strawberry Bank and Hilton's Point were bold, hardy and independent adventurers. They sought the wil- derness from motives of gain rather than of godliness. Profit, not, piety prompted them to roam. They sought to live by trade rather than by toil. When they "bade their native land good night," they left behind them the restraints of society, education and religion. For the first ten years of their residence in their new homes, no records of the administration of justice exist. It is probable that the local governors, who represented the pro- prietors and the property of the plantations, were somewhat ar- bitrary in their treatment of offenders. Doubtless crimes were perpetrated and punished ; for in the smallest communities bad men are always found. "I have chosen you twelve," said our Savior, "and one of you is a devil." This is a pretty fair ratio of knaves and cheats to the good and true men of every age. We expect about one in twelve to betray his trusts and de- fraud his creditors ; and a progressive people increases rather than diminishes this average. Only ten years after the first set- tlement at Little Harbor, crimes of such enormity were com- mitted that the local governor dared not punish them. In Octo- ber, 1633, Capt. Wiggen wrote to the governor of Massachu- setts requesting him to arraign and try a notorious criminal The governor intimated that he would do so if Pascataquack lay within their limits, as was supposed. This is said to be the first official intimation that Massachusetts claimed to own New Hampshire. Other petitions of the same kind followed; and New Hampshire criminals were tried and sentenced by Massa- chusetts courts. Sometimes a prisoner escaped to his own col- ony, and men of the baser sort there protected him against the officers of the law. After the union of the two colonies in 1641, the courts of Massachusetts, superior and inferior, were estab- lished in New Hampshire. Substantial justice was administered and the land had rest. No period of our colonial history was so free from harassing litigations, civil and criminal, as that passed under the jurisdiction of the Bay State. After the ad- vent of royal governors, controversies were multiplied, violence
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usurped the place of law; and, as in the iron age of the old poets, Justice, "last of the celestials," left the land. Law-suits respecting land titles, royal tribute and the king's pines pro- voked the hostility of the people, and mobs prevented the exe- cution of the decrees of royal courts. The Revolution put an effectual estoppel to such suits. Under the new government the people created their own courts and compelled suitors to obey their mandates. It deserves notice, however, that under the various governments of the colony and state, for two hun- dred years, very few of the justices were eminent for their knowl- edge of law. "Under the colonial government," says Hon. William Plumer, "causes of importance were carried up, for de- cision in the last resort, to the governor and council, with the right in certain cases-a right seldom claimed-of appeal to the king in council. As the executive functionaries were not generally lawyers, and the titular judges were often from other professions than the legal, they were not much influenced in their decisions by any known principles of established law. So much, indeed, was the result supposed to depend on the favor or aversion of the court, that presents from the suitors to the judges were not uncommon, nor perhaps unexpected." Possi- bly the learned Chancellor of King James I. was not, after all, the " meanest of mankind."
CHAPTER XXIV.
ADMINISTRATION OF CRANFIELD.
Mason had now learned from experience that the people, if governed by officers of their own choice, would never admit his title to their lands. He therefore besought the king to appoint a new president who would favor his claims. Mason, by sur- rendering one-fifth of the quit-rents to the king for the support of a royal governor, procured the appointment of Edward Cran- field as lieutenant-governor and commander-in-chief of New Hampshire. Avarice was Cranfield's ruling passion; and the proprietor approached him through that avenue by mortgaging to him the whole province for twenty-one years as security for the payment of one hundred and fifty pounds per annum to the new governor. Thus Cranfield became personally interested in Mason's claim. His commission was dated May 9, 1682. It
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granted almost unlimited powers. The members of the old council were retained and three new members were nominated, including Mason. Very soon after entering upon his office, Cranfield suspended from the council the popular leaders, Wal- dron and Martyn. The people soon learned that Cranfield was clothed with extraordinary powers ; and that both their liberty and property were in peril. He could veto all acts of the legis- lature and dissolve them at his pleasure. The judges also were appointed by him. At the first session of the assembly, which he called in November, he with royal condescension restored Waldron and Martyn to the council ; acting arbitrarily, both in their suspension and restoration. The assembly generously voted two hundred and fifty pounds for his support. This sop, for the hour, filled the gaping jaws of this greedy Cerberus ; but the next session, a few months later, he summarily dissolved, be- cause they refused to raise further sums for the support of the government. This act created at once popular discontent. A mob collected in Exeter and Hampton, headed by Edward Gove, a member of the dissolved assembly, and with noise and confu- sion declared for " liberty and reformation." Gove passed from town to town, calling on the people to rise ; but the majority were not ready for revolt. Gove, finding his cause unsupported, surrendered himself to the officers of the government, was tried for treason and condemned to death. His rash followers were pardoned. He was not executed, but was sent to London and imprisoned in the tower.
On the fourteenth of February, 1683, the governor called on the inhabitants of New Hampshire "to take their leases from Mason within one month," with threats of confiscation in case of neglect to do so. Very few persons complied with this requi- sition. The courts were then arranged so as to secure a verdict in every case for Mason. The notorious Barefoot was made judge ; the council was filled with the creatures of the governor; the juries were selected from those who had taken leases of the proprietor. With matters thus arranged, Mason commenced actions of ejection against the principal inhabitants of the sev- eral towns. No defence was made. The verdict in every case was for the plaintiff, and he was legally put in possession of the forfeited estates ; but, so strong was the popular hatred against him, he could neither keep nor sell them. The government became a mere instrument of oppression. The citizens were harassed beyond endurance. The people, as a forlorn hope, re- solved to petition the king for protection. This was done in se- cret. Nathaniel Weare of Hampton was appointed their agent to present their petition to his majesty. The remainder of this turbulent administration was a series of collisions with the assem-
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bly, the people and the pulpit. Cranfield was a perverse, arrogant, impracticable schemer ; and repeated failures in his high-handed measures made him desperate. He undertook to rule without the assembly, and thus involved himself in difficulty with the home government. While he remained in office he succeeded in making everybody unhappy and uncomfortable. He owed the Rev. Joshua Moody a special spite. He determined to bring this sturdy independent to terms. Accordingly he issued an order in council, requiring ministers to admit all persons of suitable years and not vicious to the Lord's supper ; and their children to baptism ; and that if any person desired baptism or the sacrament of the Lord's supper to be administered accord- ing to the liturgy of the church of England, it should be done. The train was now laid for an explosion, and this Guy Fawkes held the matches. The governor himself, with Mason and Hinckes, appeared in Mr. Moody's church the next Sabbath, de- siring to partake of the Lord's supper, and requiring him to administer it according to the liturgy. He at once declined to do so. Moody was arraigned for disobedience to the king's command. He made a suitable defence, pleading that he was not episcopally ordained and therefore not legally qualified for the service demanded. The governor gained over several re- luctant judges and Moody was sentenced to "six months' im- prisonment, without bail or mainprise." Mr. Moody was imme- diately taken into custody, without taking leave of his family, and held in durance for thirteen weeks. He was released then, by the interposition of friends, under charge from the governor to preach no more in the province. He was therefore invited to take charge of a church in Boston, where he remained till 1692, when his persecutors had been removed. Mr. Moody was far in ad- vance of his age in toleration. He did not believe in hanging Quakers or witches ; but chose rather to rescue them from their persecutors. For these reasons, the memory of that good man is still cherished in all the churches where he was known.
Mr. Brewster, in his "Rambles about Portsmouth," says: "In thirty years, Mr Moody wrote four thousand and seven hundred sermons ; or two and one-half each week. In those days ser- mons generally occupied one hour." The people had not then approached that limit of brevity in pulpit performances pre- scribed by an eminent English judge ; his rule for the length of a sermon was, "twenty minutes, with a leaning to mercy."
The governor, being foiled in all his plans, proceeded to levy and collect taxes without the sanction of the assembly. His officers were resisted ; they were assailed with clubs in the street and scalded with boiling water in the houses. In process of time the agent of the colony was heard in England, and the lords of
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trade decided that Cranfield had exceeded his instructions and the king granted him leave of absence, rewarding his loyalty with an office in Barbadoes. So the colony was relieved of one tyrant to give place to another ; for Walter Barefoot, his deputy, reign- ed in. his stead. Cranfield seems not to have possessed one element of nobility of character or generosity. He was deceitful and treacherous, as well as vindictive and malicious. His suc- cessor, during his short administration, walked in his steps. He continued the prosecutions instituted by Mason, and allowed persons to be imprisoned on executions which the lords of trade had pronounced illegal. The service of these writs was attended with peril to the officials. In Dover, the rioters who resisted the sheriffs were seized during divine worship in the church. The officers were again roughly handled, and one young lady knock- ed down one of them with her bible. Both Barefoot and Mason received personal injuries, at the house of the former, from two members of the assembly who went thither to converse about these suits. Mason was thrown upon the fire and badly burned; and Barefoot, attempting to aid him, had two of his ribs broken. Mason commenced the assault. It was an unseemly quarrel for a prospective baron and an actual governor. During the year 1655 a treaty was made with the eastern Indians which was observed by them for about four years. In 1686, Mason, having hitherto been defeated in his attempts to recover the cultivated lands of the state, turned his attention to the unoccupied por- tions. He disposed of a large tract of a million acres, on both sides of the Merrimack, to Jonathan Tyng and nineteen others, for a yearly rent of ten shillings. The purchasers had previously extinguished the Indian title. He also leased for a thousand years, to Hezekiah Usher and his heirs, "the mines, minerals and ores" within the limits of New Hampshire, reserving to himself one-fourth of the "royal ores" and one-seventeenth of the baser sort.
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CHAPTER XXV.
GOVERNMENT UNDER DUDLEY AND ANDROS.
Kings and royal governors seem to have been ordained of God to set up, maintain and perpetuate "a school of affliction" for the New England colonists, who certainly were meet for the kingdom of heaven, if "much tribulation " could fit them for it. Charles II., in the latter part of his reign, grew more rapacious ; he could scarcely become more wicked. He seized every char- ter, at home and abroad, which impeded his despotic march. The royal charter of Massachusetts had for nearly a century shielded her against the assaults of savages, corporations and monarchs, a climax of human ills such as few rising states are ever called to endure. Their "anointed king," as they defer- entially called him, resolved to take that province under his own protection. Randolph was the malicious "accuser of his breth- ren," who stimulated the avaricious monarch to lie in wait for the innocent. He traversed the ocean like a shuttle, eight times in nine years, to effect "a consummation so devoutly to be wish- ed." He succeeded ; and the charter was declared forfeited. It was never surrendered. The people resolved "to die by the hands of others rather than their own." New England was henceforth to be under one president. This was in one respect favorable ; for there would be fewer wolves "to cover and devour " the flock. The king died before his arbitrary plans were consummated. His brother, James II., was more bigoted and cruel than his predecessor. No agent of his has a single bright page in history. His officials were all men "after his own heart"; and no Judas or Nero ever possessed less of the "milk of human kindness." It is not strange that the reputation of William Penn has suf- fered at the hands of Macaulay, for being known as the friend of such a monster. He appointed Joseph Dudley president of New England in May, 1685 ; and, about one year and a half later, the infamous Andros, whose reputation for meanness is only eclipsed by that of his contemporary, Judge Jeffreys. He was styled "Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the Ter- ritory and Dominion of New England." These men were both armed with frightfully inquisitorial powers. No right, privilege or franchise was safe from their grasp. They were virtually em- powered to make laws and execute them ; to assess taxes and collect them. Where popular assemblies were ordained, they
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could easily evade their use or decrees. The provinces were now in the hands of tyrants, whose only object was to enrich themselves and increase their power. The press was restrained, liberty of conscience invaded, excessive taxes levied and landed titles annulled. Sir Edmund Andros began, with fair professions and conciliatory measures, to lure the unwary into his snares. His true character was soon revealed ; and he became an object of popular aversion. Mason had obtained a decision in the king's court against Vaughan, who had appealed from the judg- ment rendered against him in New Hampshire. This armed the proprietor with new powers, and he proceeded to vindicate his claim to the soil with new energy. But in the midst of his pros- ecutions Mason was arrested by death, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. He left two sons, John and Robert, as heirs of all his quarrels. His life was full of trouble and destitute of honor or profit.
While the political heavens were shrouded in deepest gloom, as the people gazed upon the storm in an agony of despair, they suddenly beheld
- -"a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night."
The despotism of James II. had gone beyond the people's en- durance. They had arisen in their might and driven the perjured tyrant from his throne and realm. The arrival of this intelli- gence filled the people with joy. Andros imprisoned the man who brought the news. The people of Boston rose in arms, arrested the governor, Andros, and his principal adherents, and sent them as state prisoners to England, to await the decision of the new government. The people of New Hampshire were for a time left without a responsible government. A convention was called, composed of deputies from all the towns, to deliber- ate upon their exigencies. At their meeting in January, 1690, after some unsatisfactory discussion of other plans, they resolved on a second union with Massachusetts. A petition to this effect was readily granted by their old ally, till the king's pleasure should be known. The old laws and former officials for a time resumed their sway ; but this union was brief. The king was, for some reasons, averse to the people's wish. Their old adversaries, the heirs of Mason, were again in the field. They had sold their claim to Samuel Allen of London for seven hundred and fifty pounds. Through his influence the petition was not granted ; and the same Allen was made governor and his son-in-law, John Usher, lieutenant-governor. Thus the people of New Hamp- shire were again furnished with a governor, a creature whom they little needed and greatly hated. Again war, pestilence and famine were at their doors. The Indians were upon the war
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path ; the governor was exercising the vocation of a civil rob- ber, and the small-pox was raging in the land with fearful deso- lation. The times were dark ; their souls were tried ; their hearts were sad ; but their trust was in God.
CHAPTER XXVI.
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KING WILLIAM'S WAR.
When James II. was expelled from England he fled to France, and the king of that country espoused his cause. This led to a war between England and France which lasted from 1689 to the peace of Ryswick, in 1697. It was called " King William's War." The English colonies were all involved in it. The English king not only brought woes upon them by his accession to power, but entailed them by his abdication of it. It is difficult to see why such scourges of mankind are permitted to live. The patriarch so felt when he exclaimed, "Wherefore do the wicked live, be- come old, yea, are mighty in power ? " The philosophic poet answers the question by another equally puzzling :
" If storms and earthquakes break not heaven's design, Why then a Borgia or a Catiline?"
The Indians had, for some time previous to the English Rev- olution, shown signs of hostility. Some of those Indians who had been seized, contrary to treaty stipulations, thirteen years before, by Major Waldron and others, had returned from slav- ery. They did not appeal in vain to the love of vengeance so characteristic of the red men. A confederacy was formed be- tween the tribes of Penacook and Pigwackett [or Pequawkett]. They determined to surprise the Major and his neighbors, with whom they professed to live on terms of friendship. They were also excited to war by the emissaries of the Baron de Castine, a French nobleman who had settled as an Indian trader on lands between the Penobscot and Nova Scotia to which both the French and English laid claim. This representative of an ancient noble house had made his home with savages, and established in his house a harem of Indian women. He furnished the Indians with muskets and thus stimulated them to fight. Under pretence of punishing some violation of the laws of neutrality, Andros visited the house of the baron and plundered it, in the spring of 1688. Castine, of course, was exasperated at this act of folly
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and roused the Indians, who were his devoted friends, to avenge his wrongs. Other causes were alleged for the rising of the In- dians. Some, doubtless, were just ; for the early settlers of Maine were not very punctilious in keeping their treaties with the natives. The Indians, with cause or without it, were deter- mined to shed blood. On the evening of the twenty-seventh of June, 1689, two squaws entered the house of Major Waldron, then eighty years of age, and asked permission to lodge by the fire. This hospitality was granted. In the night they rose, un- barred the gates and gave a signal for the conspirators to enter. The brave old man, roused by the entrance of the crowd, seized his sword, and for some time defended himself. He was finally stunned by a blow upon the head. They then cut off his nose and ears, placed him in a chair on a table in his own hall and mocked him, shouting, "Judge Indians again !" Making sport, too, of their debts to him for goods he had sold them, they gashed his aged breast with their hatchets, and each fiend cried out, "Thus I cross out my accounts !" At length, the venerable old councilor, whose "natural force was not abated " by age, reeled and fell from the loss of blood, and died amid the exulta- tions of his torturers. The assassins burned his house and those of his neighbors ; and, after butchering twenty-three inno- cent citizens, stole away to the wilderness. Such is Indian war- fare. It has less nobility and magnanimity in it than the assaults of a beast of prey.
Some historians affirm that every act of treachery and cruelty recorded against the red man has its parallel in the history of civilized warfare. This may be true, but these acts of white men are the exceptions not the rule. If modern nations always violated treaties whenever a powerful ally could be secured ; if it were their habit to begin hostilities without previous notice, to fight from coverts and ambuscades, to fall upon their ene- mies by stealth when alone and unarmed, to scalp and torture their captives, to dash infants against trees and rocks and com- pel women to wade, for hundreds of miles, through deep snows, barefoot and half clad,-then, and then only, would the cases be parallel and the character of the red men would be fairly vindi-
cated. The defence set up for the barbarities of that night of horror in Dover is that Major Waldron had, many years before, broken his pledge of peace with some of these Indians. Sup- pose the charge to be true, in all its length and breadth, how does that excuse the wanton cruelties inflicted on his neighbors,- on innocent women and helpless children? The recital of the horrors of that fearful visitation even now fills the mind with terror. We shudder at the picture which the imagination pre- sents of that dreadful scene. The captives, men, women and
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children, with the scalps of the dead, were carried to Canada and sold to the French. The history of some of those captives surpasses fable. Sarah Gerrish, the granddaughter of Major Waldron, was taken with the rest. In the journey, on foot, her escape from perils of flood, fire and starvation was almost a miracle. She was purchased by a lady in Canada, who treated her kindly and educated her in a nunnery. A single act of gratitude is recorded on that eventful night. The life of a wo- man was spared through the intervention of an Indian whom she had protected when "the strange Indians" were seized thirteen years before.
Companies of armed men were immediately sent out in search of the invaders. Captain Noyes was sent to Penacook and Captain Wincal to Winnipiseogee, but they could do little more than destroy the standing corn of the Indians who had fled. Massachusetts sent men in large numbers to the eastward, but little was accomplished by them. While these forces were on their march, the Indians, lurking in the woods about Oyster River, surprised eighteen men at work and killed seventeen of them. They also attacked and burned a house heroically defended by two boys, who refused to surrender till a promise was made to spare the lives of the family. They perfidiously murdered three or four of the children, impaling one upon a sharp stake before the eyes of his mother.
In the beginning of the year 1690, Count de Frontenac, gov- ernor of Canada, eager to annoy the English and gain renown with his sovereign, Louis XIV., sent three parties of French and Indians into the American settlements. These murderous bands carried death and desolation along their whole march. One company, numbering fifty-two men, came to Salmon Falls in the month of March. Here they succeeded in surprising the vil- lage. Thirty-four of the bravest were killed and the remainder, numbering fifty-four, mostly women and children, were taken prisoners. The houses, barns and cattle were burned. The captives suffered untold miseries in their dreary march to Can- ada. One man was roasted alive; and while the fires were kindling around him, pieces of his own flesh were hewn from his body and hurled in his face. Children were dashed against trees because their mothers could not quiet them. These marauders were pursued by one hundred and forty men, who were hastily gathered from the neighboring towns, and a drawn battle was fought in the woods. Only two Indians were killed and the rest escaped. In the following May, the Indians attacked Newing- ton, burning the houses, killing fourteen people, and capturing six. In July, they attacked and killed eight men while mowing in a field near Lamprey River. They also attempted to take a
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