USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Exeter > History of the town of Exeter, New Hampshire > Part 40
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Ordred voted and granted at a town metinge by a goynt Consent that Christepher lason hath a grant to set a weare in the Riuar of Exetar ye 28th of the 4th mo. 1644, to him and his Aiers foreuer vpon the Condishons as foloweth, first that ye Inhabetants of ye towne of Exetar shall be supplyed with Alewifes to fish thar ground euery yere before aney othars at 38 par thousand, and whot Alewifes are taken shall be equally deuided according as ye Inhab- etants shall agre, and if thar be no fish taken then Christepher to be fre from aney damiedges to ye towne, and whot fish the Inhabe- tants shall buy of ye said Christepor he ye said Chrisephor doth binde himselfe to take such pay for it as ye towne afords, to be paid once in six months, and In case the said Christepor or his sucksesors shall heraftar tendar ye saile of ye weare that then he shall in ye first place tendar it to ye towne for Countrey pay, and we ye Inhabetants do Retaine our liberties to fish in ye fawls or elce whar in ye Rinar, but not to set vp aney othar ware so as to forstall that ware which Christopher is to set vp, and ye said Christepher is to make flud gats so that barkes botes and Canows may Com to the towne, in witnes her vnto we do set to our hands for vs and our sucksesars Intarchangably for euer ye day and yere aboue writen.
In ye behalfe of ye towne
RICHARD BULLGAR SAMUEL + GRENFELDS marke. CHRISTOPHER LAWSON.
It is ordered that none but seteled inhabitantes shall make use of woode or common, nor that noe inhabytant shall inploy anny Aboute wod worke, but of the setteled inhabitants.
APPENDIX III.
BICENTENNIAL ADDRESS OF HON. JEREMIAH SMITH.
A FEW PASSAGES, FOR TIIE MOST PART BIOGRAPHICAL. ARE OMITTED AS THE INFORMATION THEY CONTAIN IS GIVEN IN THE EARLY PART OF THIS VOLUME.
WE need not be told, that our ancestors were not so rich ; that they were laborious, industrious and economical ; that they belonged to the middle class of society in their native country, embracing, however, none of the lowest of that class, who had neither the wish nor the ability to emigrate.
It will be my endeavor to vindicate the religious character of the first settlers, and that of their leader, in an especial manner, under the cruel persecution he underwent. Persecutors are much in the habit of giving false characters of the men they persecute, as if that would palliate, which only aggravates the injury. The civil fathers of Massachusetts, and the reverend elders, must have had hard hearts, if, when they beheld the little band,-thirty or forty families,-collecting their wives and children, their cattle, their furniture and their scanty stores, for the wilderness of Swamscot, they felt no pity for the sufferers. Albeit these men were not of the melting mood, they must have shed tears at the piteous sight. It was but a journey of three or four days, but in prospect it was dreary enough. There was a small settlement at Lynn, older ones at Salem and Ipswich, and a plantation just begun at Newbury ; but all between was a thick, dark forest, and the path little better than marked trees. We are told that about this time a person lost his way in the woods, between Salem and Lynn, and wandered about several days before he reached a settle- ment. Two years before, the famous Hooker, with his little colony of one hundred souls, who settled Hartford, were a whole week performing their journey, encumbered as our little colony was. I need not say, that, after three or four days' journey ours
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reached Swamscot Falls greatly fatigued. Here they found no friends to bid them welcome. This was the most painful circum- stance of all.
Several weeks must have been spent in preparing log huts to shelter them from the weather. But the toils of our emigrants were but just beginning. Their views were merely agricultural, to till the ground for a subsistence ; and we must remember it was the hard and plain tillage of a common, not of an exuberant soil. The settlements at Portsmouth and Dover were made by traders, factors and fishermen, who hoped to carry on a profitable traffic with the natives and foreigners, and to enrich themselves from the sea, not the land. Mason and Gorges aimed at still greater things. Their connections at Court, and their influence with the Great Council of Plymouth, obtained grants of large tracts ; to Gorges, Maine, and to Mason, New Hampshire. These lands they intended to parcel out to others at a small quit-rent. They were to be cultivated by tenants, while the proprietors were to be clothed with the jura regalia; with all the trappings of little monarchs. Experience soon taught them the fallibility and the futility of all such schemes. They expended large sums in putting the machine in motion, and died in debt. Neither they nor their posterity ever realized a tenth part of the sums they expended. Our lands are not rich enough to support landlord and tenant. The cultivator must have all the produce, and little enough, too. The views of some projectors were still more romantic. They flattered themselves with immense wealth from the discovery here of rich mines of the precious metals ; such as the adventurers in our southern hemisphere had in fact realized.
The little band we have conducted to this place, in point of condition, intelligence and education, will compare well with the first settlers of Massachusetts, if we except a very few of superior family, wealth and education, who took the lead in that enterprise. Perhaps there never was a greater equality in the rank, condition, education and circumstances of the planters of a new colony ; none rich, and none without the means of obtaining the necessaries of life ; none highly educated, and none without the education common to the same rank in the mother country at the time.
Among our settlers there were no merchants, or manufacturers, . or persons skilled in the arts of trade. They were from the agri- cultural districts of England ; of course not ignorant of the art of husbandry, as then practised in that country; but they could
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hardly be aware how little their knowledge would avail them here. The soil was different from that of Lincolnshire and Norfolk ; and there the tillage was of lands long cultivated ; here a wilder- ness was to be subdued and turned into a fruitful field, a new seience to them. No doubt their scanty portion of implements of agriculture was ill adapted to their wants ; and a supply was not at that day, as now, a matter of easy acquisition. They must have suffered, too, for want of animals. Cattle of all kinds were scarce and dear. The new plantations in Massachusetts could spare none, at any price.
It seems Captain Mason had sent over, a few years before, a large number of cattle of the best breeds, imported from Denmark. He died about two years before, and his servants had possessed themselves of his effects. Probably from these men our settlers were able to obtain a partial supply. But, after all, the prospect was gloomy ; gloomy as the dark forests in the midst of which they had seated themselves. What now, think ye, supported the drooping spirits of our emigrants? If ever there was a people thrown entirely upon their own resources, few and seanty as those resources were, we have them here. They were beyond the bounds of Massachusetts ; strangers to the people of Dover and Portsmonth ; every way strangers. There was no congeniality between them. Massachusetts had driven them out. To whom shall they go? Happily, they belonged to that class of men who find no difficulty in answering the question. They had just been condemned as enemies of God and his religion ; but this unjust sentence of their fellow mortals could not deprive them of what they valued above all earthly good -their religious principles and belief ; and to these they looked for support.
The bulk of mankind, you know, adopt the religions opinions in which they were born and educated, without examination and without inquiry ; and what is so adopted makes but a feeble im- pression on the mind. But it was not so with the Puritans who settled New England, any more than with the first converts to Christianity ; they heard gladly, but did not yield implicit faith. " Are these things so?" They inquired, reasoned and compared, and were reasoned with ; their convictions, therefore, were strong. They could not fail to produce fruits. They had the faith that overcomes the world and all wordly things.
The Author of nature has implanted in the heart of man a strong attachment to the land of his birth ; to parents, children,
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kindred ; to the scenes of his early youth, and even to the graves of his ancestors. Yet all these will he forsake when his conscience calls for the sacrifice. So thought and so acted the Puritans who settled New England. The rulers of their native land, and the church in which they were nurtured and fed, like an unnatural step-mother, as in their anger they called her, cast them out for non-conformity to a few idle ceremonies she was pleased to enjoin. They could not in conscience obey. They had persuaded them- selves that this gaudy worship was popish and idolatrous, and therefore to be resisted at all hazards; and so believing, they left, such of them as were not driven away, their native land, and came to this wilderness.
The settlers of Exeter belonged to this sect of Christians. When they joined themselves to their brethren of Massachusetts, they had the hope that they had reached the termination of all their sufferings for conscience's sake. And was this an unreason- able hope? In this New World, what should hinder their enjoy- ing in brotherly love and Christian fellowship the pure, simple worship of God, unmixed with popish superstitions ; accountable for their Christian faith and religious observances, not to the infallible head of the popish or the never-erring head of the English churches, but to the unerring head of the true church, Christ himself. This was the Puritan doctrine in England. And they were mistaken. Their teacher in theology, it was believed, had assigned an undue proportion to the covenant of grace in the economy of salvation, and in politics they were also found in error. They wished to continue Vane in the chair of government, whereas the majority, as it proved at the next election, preferred his rival. Both questions were alike settled by major vote. Where was now the right of private judgment in matters of religion, where conscience is so deeply concerned? For these offences (for in minorities they are offences), they must now pass once more through the fiery furnace of persecution. This second death was far more painful than the first. It was upon grounds far less intelligible than the first. It was upon a difference of opinion in abstruse points in theology.
When persecution visits a country, it is their boldest as well as their best men who become its victims. When all other earthly hopes fail, they abandon their firesides and their altars, that they may keep their consciences. It is the weak and timid minds who remain at home. They meanly crouch beneath the rod of the
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oppressor, afraid to exercise their reasoning powers. They find it safest to conceal their religious opinions, and seek security in hypocrisy. Who fled from France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, one hundred and fifty years ago? The choicest spirits of that gallant nation ; the men of the greatest intellectual and moral strength. They enriched the neighboring nations. Our population in America gained moral and intellectual strength by this foolish as well as wicked measure of Louis XIV. To this cause we are indebted for our Bowdoins, our Dexters, our Jays, DeLanceys, Boudinots, Hugers. Who were the men driven from England by the bloody Mary and her no less cruel sister? The Puritans : men of whom the world was not worthy. The effect of persecution for opinions, is to set people to thinking and reason- ing. It improves the intellectual and moral powers - gives added strength and firmness of purpose But I am afraid it hardens the heart ; for how often do we find the persecuted, on a change of circumstances, themselves acting the wicked part of persecutors ? And so it was in New England in her early days.
Before the arrival of his friends, Mr. Wheelwright had pur- chased from the Sagamore of Piscataqua a large tract of land, - upwards of five hundred thousand acres. There is no pretence that the men of Exeter acquired any legal title by this purchase. Neither Wheelwright, nor any of the other grantees named in the deed, ever asserted any exclusive right in himself. The town acted as the proprietors. I would not be understood to adopt Sir Edmund Andros's language, " that such deeds were no better than the scratch of a bear's paw."
The first settlers at the time had no mode of obtaining a legal title. The Council of Plymouth had been dissolved a short time before, and Mason, to whom they had granted, was dead; and his devisees were infants, and no claim was made in their behalf for thirty years ; and then they waked up, not to benefit them- selves, but to vex and disquiet the peaceable inhabitants who, though destitute of a legal, had, nevertheless, the most equitable of all titles : - purchase from the natural owners ; long possession, without any adverse claim ; the defence of the settlement against the savages and the French ; and the cultivation and settlement of a part of the country, whereby the value of the rest was greatly enhanced. In truth, they paid the full value and more, and could with a clear conscience hold the lands they claimed, against the world.
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I cannot learn that our Indians ever complained, or afterwards set up any title to the lands sold to Wheelwright. The transac- tion between Wheelwright and the sagamore was a sufficient license to settle and occupy, and was highly creditable to his liber- ality, prudence and care of his flock. But our ancestors could not only find no one to sell them the lands they possessed, but they could find no person to govern them. As English-born subjects, they knew they could not throw off their allegiance to the Crown. But the Crown had no representative in New Eng- land. Massachusetts governed itself, and so, in fact, did all the other settlements. From necessity, therefore, this handful of men were compelled to resort to original principles. That the weak might be protected against the strong, and the good against the bad, they seem at first, by mere verbal agreement, to have insti- tuted government.
At the close of the first year, on the fourth of July, 1639, they solemnly subscribed a written instrument, or constitution, which they called a Combination. With an acknowledgment of some sort of dependence on the Crown, they adopted the English Chris- tian laws, as they understood them, -doubtless intending in this truly democratic government, to reject, in toto, all that regarded the hierarchy and church establishment, which they deemed popish and anti-Christian, and altogether unsuitable to a settlement like ours. In this opinion they were far more correct than the tyrant Governor Cranfield, half a century afterwards, who instituted a criminal prosecution against Mr. Moody, the minister of Ports- mouth, for disobedience to that system, in refusing to administer the sacrament, according to the rites of the English Church, to himself and his unworthy associates. Mr. Moody withstood the little tyrant to his fall, and suffered imprisonment for a long time in the common jail.
John Wheelwright of Lincolnshire was born in the latter end of the reign of Elizabeth. His ancestors, no doubt, were of respectable standing in society, for he inherited a considerable real estate, which he disposed of by his last will. His parents had the good sense to bestow a portion of their wealth in giving their son a learned education. He had bright parts, and in youth was remarkable for the boldness, zeal and firmness of mind he dis- played on all occasions. He was educated for the ministry, but embracing the Puritan sentiments, he necessarily incurred the censure of the Church for non-conformity. Laud was then
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Archbishop of Canterbury, and determined to enforce the strietest observance of the ceremonies. We are not informed of the partic- ular in which Wheelwright failed. Cotton's was, not kneeling at the sacrament.
Laud was a learned and probably a sincere man ; but, like many other good men, he indulged an excessive fondness for the pageantry and splendor of publie worship ; for the minutiæe and exterior parts of religion. Ile was, at the same time, the most active member of the High Commission Court-a tribunal with which many of our early and distinguished clergy had occasion to be well acquainted. When the great and undefined power of this Court was wielded by a determined High Churchman, no Puritan could exercise his ministry within its reach, and its jurisdiction was co-extensive with the kingdom itself. The learned, mild and catholic Cotton could not elude its pursuivants. He was obliged to fly his country like a felon. Mr. Wheelwright came to Boston about three years after Cotton.
Every thing went on prosperously as could be desired, in the new settlement. A church was gathered, and Mr. Wheelwright, of course, was the pastor. Moderate grants of land were made to him. He had no other compensation for his services and advances. His knowledge and superior talents must have been extremely useful in the infant plantation. Our early records show a strong and grateful sense of the obligation on the part of the town. For a short time he deemed himself safe from his perse- cutors ; but Massachusetts in that day had a politic head and a long arm, and Mr. Wheelwright was obliged to remove, and the four New Hampshire towns submitted to Massachusetts, -Exeter the last. This was in 1643.
Wheelwright, just before his removal, obtained of Sir Ferdinando Gorges a grant of a considerable tract in Wells. In the deed he is styled "Pastor of the Church in Exeter." He remained in Wells about three years.
His next remove was to Ilampton. That people greatly desired his ministerial services. He remained eight or nine years at Hampton, and then returned to England, where he renewed his acquaintance with his old classmate, Oliver Cromwell, and with his old friend, Sir Henry Vane. Both these distinguished men, though at odds with each other, were friendly to Wheelwright. This was near the close of Cromwell's eventful life. Wheelwright
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is said to have been a favorite with the Protector. While in Eng- land he probably resided chiefly on his estate in Lincolnshire, one hundred and thirty miles north of London.
At the Restoration, in 1660, he returned, and was soon settled in Salisbury, in our vicinity, as the successor of their first minis- ter, Mr. W. Worcester. Here he closed a long and busy life, being reputed a sound, orthodox, profitable and approved minister of the gospel. He died November, 1679-the oldest minister in New England - about eighty-five years of age.
From his family proceeded all the Wheelwrights in Massachu- setts, Maine and New Hampshire. Many of his descendants have been respectable in character and property. His son, grandson and great-grandson have been councillors. Thus it pleased heaven to bestow on him the blessing of long life, and a numerous and honorable progeny.
I have gone into the history of Mr. Wheelwright's persecution and sufferings, not for the purpose of condemning the errors and wrongs of the government of that day, but to vindicate the char- acter of our founder. We have an interest in his good name, and he who robs him of that, robs us. I entertain no doubt that, speaking in general terms, the eiders and magistrates of Massa- chusetts were good men, and thought themselves justified in their treatment of Wheelwright and his friends. Without a minute and careful examination of this case we can have no just conception of the early settlers, their bigotry, superstition and intolerance. It arose in some measure from their peculiar situation ; and no trans- action of the early day can be understood without a minute atten- tion to these traits in their character. To omit these, in giving a history of that time, would be like enacting Shakespeare's Hamlet, leaving out the character of the Prince of Denmark.
Religion at that day entered into every thing; the magistrates were elected, and the government administered, according to the particular religious views of the majority. Both clergy and laity were made worse by the union, just as they themselves believed to be the case in the country whenee they came. Many of the writers of these times were unfriendly to Wheelwright and Vane ; yet even they are obliged to admit that Wheelwright was famous for learning, ability, piety and zeal, and that his moral character was entirely free from spot or blemish.
The amiable Elliot says, Mr. Wheelwright's conduct " in New Hampshire discovered an ambitious turn -a desire to be chief."
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Sullivan, in his history of Maine, adds to the ambition, of being the first man in Exeter in 1638, that of mingling in the quarrels of Dover with the redoubtable Underhill, Larkham and Knolles, "as they pretended about religion, but in fact for the chair of the Dover government."
The Exeter men are supposed to have taken sides with their chief, in these ambitious schemes of rule. I have spared no pains to make myself acquainted with the written memorials of Exeter, and all other records and information within my reach, and I venture to say nothing can be further from the truth. This account of the early times here, to compare small things with great, is just about as fabulous as the early history of Rome.
A short time after Wheelwright's removal to Maine, on his application, his sentence of banishment was repealed. Some writers say he made an open confession of his errors. The letters are preserved, and speak for themselves. He expressed his sorrow for the part he had taken in the controversy, and his grief at the censorious speeches he had made, and his unchristian temper in the sharp contentions of that day. I have no doubt of the sin- cerity of all this. His personal attendance was dispensed with. Hubbard's remark is no doubt correct, -"and so if the Court have over done in passing the sentence, it might in part help to balance the account, that they were so ready to grant him a release."
Among the persons who united their fortunes to ours during the first century (for I must confine myself for obvious reasons chiefly to that period), and whose names are still " familiar to our ears as household words," - the men who bore the heat and burden of the day, and to whom this day must be devoted ; -- among these men we find the names of Gilman, Folsom, Hilton, Colcord, Thing, Gordon, Magoon, Conner, Robinson, Pearson, Lawrence, King, Odiorne, Lamson, Tilton, Philbrick, Poor, Perry- man, Emery and many others. The descendants of these respect- able men still dwell among us. Time would fail me even briefly to mention the good things our records abundantly testify con- cerning them ; - how acceptably they filled the municipal and publie offices conferred upon them. But I cannot deny myself the pleasure of a brief notice of two or three.
It is no disparagement to any other family here, to say that in numbers, and every thing that constitutes respectability, the
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Gilmans stood at the head. The father, Edward, had come to Hingham, and was admitted a freeman of Massachusetts about the time of our first settlement. He soon removed to Ipswich, and near the close of his life followed his three sons to Exeter, where he died. The sons, Edward, Moses and John, were all sensible, moral, industrious and enterprising, and very soon made themselves acquainted with the best methods of advancing a new settlement in the wilderness. Edward, the son, came first, and was very much engaged in setting up mills, - useful at all times, and indispensably so at this early stage of our affairs. He came soon after Wheelwright's removal, and seems quite early to have taken the lead in our town affairs, and to have shared largely, as long as he lived, the confidence of his fellow townsmen. I need scarcely add that he was public-spirited. To obtain improved machinery and mill-gear, he took a voyage to England in 1653, and was lost at sea. Of Moses, we hear less ; he left a numerous progeny.
The town and province records, together with those of Massa- chusetts, would enable us to trace the life of John, the youngest son, at considerable length ; but I must be brief. He came here a short time before Edward sailed ; - married a respectable woman, and had sixteen children, twelve or thirteen of whom married and left issue. Among his sons were John and Nicholas. The latter had seven sons, one of whom was Daniel, born in 1702, the father of Nicholas who was the first treasurer of our State. This Nicholas filled the most responsible offices, and was the father of the late John Taylor, who, when a young man, was re- called from Congress to succeed his late father in the treasurer's office, early in 1783. I need not enumerate the offices this son filled with so much credit to himself and honor to the State, and double honor to his native town. He was eleven years succes- sively governor, and afterwards three years, making a longer period than that filled by any other person. Probably the same thing may be said at the next centennial; and I am sure no man in private or public life ever left a fairer reputation behind him, for firmness, integrity and independence.
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