USA > New Hampshire > Rockingham County > Exeter > History of the town of Exeter, New Hampshire > Part 7
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David Robinson George Roberts Edward Roe
James Sinclair
Mr. Richard Smart
Jeremy Gilman
Robert Smart, Jr. Jonathan Smith
Moses Gilman, Jr. Kinsley Hall Armstrong Horn William Morgan James Perkins
Mr. John Thomas John Wadleigh Joseph Wadleigh
CHAPTER III. EXETER UNDER THE NEW HAMPSHIRE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT.
THE new government of the province of New Hampshire went into operation in January, 1680. A governor and six councillors were appointed by the Crown. One of the councillors was an Exeter man, Jolın Gilman, who, under the Massachusetts régime, had been a magistrate and an Assistant. The members of the lower house of Assembly were elected by the people of the several towns, Exeter being entitled to choose two. Her deputies in 1680 were Captain Bartholomew Tippen and Lientenant Ralph Hall. The latter had been a resident of the town for a number of years ; but Tippen was a new comer, and apparently did not remain long. IIe had been a man of some prominence under the Massachusetts government, which was probably the reason that he was so speedily elected to office here.
Though the population of the town must have been about three hundred, the number of qualified voters at the first election was but twenty ; there being in the entire province only two hundred and nine. There was no uniform rule determining the qualifica- tions of voters, but they were selected arbitrarily ; one conse- quence of which was that Exeter had a less number, in proportion to her population, than some of the other towns. Exeter had nearly seventy tax-payers.
For the first two years after New Hampshire had become a distinet province, and so long as the principal offices of govern- ment were filled by her own citizens, affairs went on smoothly. But Robert Mason, who, as the heir of John Mason, the patentee, claimed the soil of New Hampshire as his property, and at whose solicitation, and for whose benefit, in a great measure, a separate government had been provided for the province, found that he was yet no nearer the fruition of his hopes of securing the title and emoluments of the lands, than he was under the rule of Massa-
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chusetts. He therefore made application to the king for the appointment of a new governor, a stranger to New Hampshire, Edward Cranfield, a needy, arbitrary and unscrupulous man. Mason's request was complied with, and he at once took effectnal means to attach the appointee to his interest.
The people speedily read the character and purposes of their new governor. He took his seat in October, 1683, and summoned an assembly in November, with whose concurrence a fresh body of laws was enacted, one of the most important of which provided for a change in the manner of selecting jurors. They had before been chosen by the inhabitants of the several towns ; thenceforth they were to be appointed by the sheriff, after the English custom. This piece of legislation was a fatal mistake for the people, for it put the entire personnel of the judicial courts into the control of the governor ; who, having the right to suspend refractory conn- cillors, could thus appoint such judges and sheriffs, and through them, such jurors as he pleased.
The governor, however, kept up a show of fairness, until the assembly had voted him a present of two hundred and fifty pounds, by which they vainly hoped to detach him from the interest of Mason. Immediately afterwards he came out in his true colors ; and because he could not make the popular branch consent to a bill which he approved, and because he refused to approve certain bills which they presented, he resorted to the extreme and unpre- cedented step of dissolving the assembly.
GOVE'S REBELLION AGAINST CRANFIELD.
Then, for the first time, the full extent of their utter powerless- ness against the tyranny of a mercenary governor dawned upon the understanding of the mass of the people. It is not strange that it suggested to some unbalanced minds the idea of forcible resistance. Edward Gove of Ilampton, who had been a member of the dissolved assembly, distracted by indignation and heated by strong drink, attempted to raise the standard of revolt. Hle succeeded, however, in enlisting only eight or ten young fellows in his own town and Exeter, who joined him probably in a spirit of adventure, fortified, perhaps, with the idea that they were thus championing the cause of the people. Gove, with his little follow- ing, armed with sword and pistol, appeared on horseback in the streets of Exeter, and rode to the sound of the trumpet, into
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Hampton, where they were soon arrested and committed to prison for trial.
The hare-brained project never could have endangered the gov- ernment for a moment, but Cranfield chose to regard it in the most serious light, and without delay issued a commission for a court to try the culprits. Through his attorney general he cansed an indict- ment to be presented to the grand jury against them, for treason, the highest crime known to the law. For this offence the prison- ers, nine in number, were tried, with indecent haste, little more than a week after the acts complained of were committed ; and, apparently undefended, were found guilty ; Gove of the entire offence of treason, and the others of lesser offences. Gove was sent to England and imprisoned in the Tower of London about three years, and then was pardoned and returned home.
The Exeter men concerned in this escapade were Robert, John and Joseph Wadleigh, sons of Robert Wadleigh who was a member of the dissolved assembly, Thomas Rollins and John Sleeper, and perhaps Mark Baker. They were all permitted by the governor to be set at liberty on giving security to keep the peace, except one of the Wadleighs, who was detained in prison for more than a year afterwards by the governor, apparently out of ill will to his father. Edward Smith and John Young, both of Exeter, had also been complained of as associated with Gove, but were not indicted. Nathaniel Ladd, likewise of Exeter, acted as the trumpeter to Gove's train, but when the others were captured, made his escape. It is probable that he remained perdu until after the trial. He put his mettle to a better use a few years later when he fought at Maqnoit against the hostile Indians, though he received his death-wound there.
Governor Cranfield finding his selfish projects impeded by the presence in his council of men identified in feeling with the people, suspended, by virtue of the power conferred by his commission, three of his councillors, among them John Gilman of Exeter ; and filled their places with others more subservient to his will. Then, all things being prepared to his mind, Mason entered upon his legal campaign against the landholders of the province.
ROBERT TUFTON MASON'S LAND SUITS.
In order to understand the feelings of the people it is necessary to look at Mason's claim from their point of view. They were
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aware that, half a century before, the soil had been granted to Captain .John Mason by the Council of Plymouth, by virtue of a royal patent. But they believed that though he maintained a settlement upon it for a few years, his heirs after his death had abandoned it. During the more than forty years that had elapsed since that time, the territory had been regarded and dealt with as if it had never been granted. A title had been purchased from the Indian occupants, and the lands had thenceforward been bought and sold, and transmitted by inheritance, in all respects as if they were allodial. They had been improved by the sweat of the settlers' brows, and defended by their blood against the incursions of savage enemies. These claims outweighed a thousand-fold in their minds the stale paper title of Mason. His demands they regarded as nnjust and inequitable in the highest degree, and they were prepared to resist them to the bitter end.
But as the courts were now constituted, and the jurors selected, they knew that they were helpless. Mason brought a great number of suits, in the different towns of the province, to recover the lands from their occupants. In Exeter the following persons were sued : Nathaniel Folsom, Richard Morgan, Kinsley Hall, Ralph Hall, Christian Dolloff, Ephraim Folsom, Philip Cartee, Moses Leavitt, John Folsom, Eleazer Elkins, Jonathan Robinson, Jonathan Thing, Humphrey Wilson, Peter Folsom, John Gilman, Jr. and Ephraim Folsom ; - in the adjoining precinct of Squam- scot, Andrew Wiggin and William Moore, Jr.
Pliable juries were empanelled by the sheriff, a creature of Cranfield's, and the tenants knew it to be idle to make defence ; so verdicts were returned against them " at the rate of from nine to twelve in a day." So far as the courts were concerned the governor and Mason had everything their own way.
But when the attempt was made to put the judgments in force, the tenants had their innings. The sheriff could indeed formally deliver to the claimant the possession of the lands he had recov- ered ; but the formality amounted to nothing, and the tenants continued to enjoy the premises as before. Attempts were made to sell the lands that had been thus levied on, but nobody would buy them. After a few experiments of this kind Mason recognized the futility of the proceedings, and for the time desisted. But it was fully a quarter of a century before the verdict of an indepen- dent jury put a quietus on the Masonian claims, and relieved the land-owners from apprehension.
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RESISTANCE TO ILLEGAL TAXATION.
But the irrepressible Cranfield, in the language of one of his contemporaries, "had come here after money, and money he would have." After vainly trying several devices to induce the General Assembly to pass a bill to raise money, he determined in 1684 to levy taxes on the people with the assent of the council only, and without the concurrence of the popular branch of the assembly. This was clearly a usurpation of power ; and even his accommodating council at first remonstrated against it. But the apprehension of an outbreak among the Indians at the eastward induced them to comply. The taxes were ordered by the governor and council, and warrants were issued to the constables of the several towns for their collection. But they met everywhere the same reception as in Exeter, where John Folsom, the constable, returned his warrant with the statement " that he had demanded the taxes, but was answered by almost all of them that the [governor's] commission directed the taxes should be raised by the General Assembly, but these being done by the governor and council, they would not pay."
Thereupon the Exeter warrant was committed for collection to Thomas Thurton, provost marshal of the province, together with an order of the Court of Sessions for a fine of fifty shillings against John Folsom, for neglect of duty as constable. Thurton was a coarse, brutal man, and his errand was not calculated to win him a very hearty welcome. Ile came to Exeter by way of Hampton, attended by his deputy, both on horseback, with swords by their sides. Half a score of Hampton men, armed with clubs, followed them on horseback to see and share the anticipated sport. They proceeded first to the house of Edward Gilman, situated nearly opposite the site of the present First church. Such a caval- cade naturally attracted attention, and it took little time for the whole village to learn the business that had brought it. A crowd gathered. John Folsom, the delinquent constable, appeared, and Thurton demanded of him the fine imposed by the Quarter Sessions. Folsom replied that if the marshal "came to levy execution at his house, he should meet with a red-hot spit and scalding water ; and that he did not value any warrant from the governor, council or justice of the peace, and that the marshal might go, like a rogue as he was."
Two of Mr. Gilman's aunts were at his house, the wife of John Gilman, the suspended councillor, and of Moses Gilman, his
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brother ; and they likewise gave Thurton to understand that they had kettles of boiling water ready for him, if he came to their houses to demand rates. The marshal now began to realize that he had come on a bootless errand. The crowd, reinforced by the addition among others of the Rev. John Cotton, the temporary minister of the town, then began to hustle the marshal and his deputy up and down the house, asking them tauntingly what they wore at their sides,- meaning their swords, which were, to be sure, rather ridiculous appendages, when their wearers dared not use them. There was nothing worse than horse play, but the
marshal understood very well that if he were to attempt any serious resistance, he was liable to be roughly treated. From Edward Gilman's he and his deputy went next to the house of the widow of Henry Sewall, to obtain refreshment for themselves and their horses. The crowd followed them thither, and still kept up the same system of annoyance. Then the officers and their unwel- come retinve proceeded to the house of Jonathan Thing, to serve an attachment upon him ; but the crowd would not suffer them to do so, but plainly declared to the marshal that he " should do no business relating to the execution of his office." In the end, the officers were glad to get off with whole skins, and without making the least progress in the business they had come for.
We obtain our only knowledge of this transaction from the testi- mony of Thurton himself, a bitterly prejudiced and unscrupulous witness ; but it is evident that though the whole community were indignant at the illegal attempt at taxation, and determined that the marshal should not be permitted to execute his warrant, yet they scrupulously refrained from acts of violence. The glimpse, too, that we get of the Exeter women of two hundred years ago proves that they possessed a spirit worthy of the mothers of men who had to endure the hardships of a frontier life, and to meet the onslaughts of a savage foe, with no defence save their own right arms and trusty weapons.
THE PROVINCE WITHOUT A GOVERNMENT.
The records of Exeter tell nothing of the transactions of a period of several years between 1680 and 1690. There were proba- bly reasons in the condition of the times for this reticence. Robert Mason sought to support his land-claims by searching the books of records of the several towns, whereupon the books were abstracted, and for a time disappeared. Meantime Governor Cranfield became
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discouraged in his attempt to gather wealth from his position in New Hampshire, and abandoned his office. Walter Barefoote succeeded him, and was in his turn succeeded by Joseph Dudley. Then in 1686 the province passed under the rule of Edmund Andros, governor of New England. As the appointee and repre- sentative of a Catholic sovereign, James II., he made few friends in Puritan Massachusetts where was his official residence. Ilis downfall approached on this side of the water, with equal steps with that of his royal master, on the other side. Almost simul- taneously with the deposition and imprisonment of Andros by the Massachusetts colonists, in the spring of 1689, came the news of the Revolution in England, and the accession of William III. The New England colonies were thus left without a representative of royalty to rule over them. Massachusetts, with her charter and long experience, easily set up a temporary government which answered all her wants ; but New Hampshire had no facilities for the purpose, and simply went on for nearly a year without an executive ; and, thanks to the orderly disposition and good sense of the people, without serious difficulties ; and this notwithstand- ing the situation was further complicated by the fact that an Indian war was raging in the province at the time, and Dover and Oyster river were the scenes of savage incursions and atrocities.
More than one attempt was made to induce the people of the province to unite in choosing delegates to establish a government ad interim, but for a time without avail. They did, indeed, go so far as to elect William Vaughan of Portsmouth, a member of the board of commissioners of the United Colonies of New England, for defence against the Indians ; though there is no entry upon the records of Exeter that she took part in the election. And it was not until December, 1689, that the New Hampshire towns reached the point of choosing delegates to meet for the purpose of devising some method of protection against the common enemy. Delegates were then elected by Portsmouth, Dover, Exeter and Hampton, who assembled in convention at Portsmouth on the twenty-fourth of January, 1690. The whole number was twenty-two, of whom four were from Exeter : Robert Wadleigh, Samuel Leavitt, William Hilton and Jonathan Thing; the last two taking the place of William Moore, who was originally chosen. The convention agreed upon a brief plan for the present government of the province, and submitted it to the people ; and in pursuance thereof in Dover, if nowhere else, an election was held and officers were
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voted for. But the unreasonable jealousy manifested by Hampton towards the other towns, prevented the proposed government from going into effect.
By this time the need of a recognized head of authority in the province was so apparent and so pressing, that some of the princi- pal men of Portsmouth who were kindly affected towards Massa- chusetts, drew up a petition, addressed to the authorities of that colony, to be received under their government and protection, as formerly, until their majesties' pleasure should be known. The petition was speedily circulated in the several towns, and received the signatures of three hundred and seventy-two persons, a very large proportion of the adult males in the province. Of these, sixty or seventy, at least, were residents of Exeter. Agreeably to the prayer of the petition the old union with Massachusetts was renewed on the nineteenth of March, 1690, and lasted until the commission of Governor Samuel Allen was published in New Hampshire on the thirteenth of August, 1692.
During the second union Massachusetts made a call upon the New Hampshire towns to choose each "two meet persons " to assemble together with the Justices of the Peace of the province, to adjust the charges of the Indian war, and to assess the amount thereof upon the inhabitants. Exeter chose Peter Coffin and John Gilman as her representatives for this duty.
The records of the town do not show any important action for several years after this, save what properly belongs to other departments of this history. At the annual meeting in April, 1705, John Light was received an inhabitant, and had a condi- tional grant of land; perhaps the last instance of this formal investiture with the privileges of citizenship. It was not many years later that the final division of the town's lands was made, after which there was no reason, and no attempt, to keep up the old theory of a close corporation of the inhabitants.
Shortly afterwards the town began to improve their system of records. It was voted in 1707 that " all rates made by the select- men shall be committed to the town clerk to be entered upon record, before they be delivered to the constable ;" in 1713 that " the town clerk buy a book at the town's charge and enter all the votes needed by the selectmen, at large, and all accounts of the town's disbursements, debt and credit ;" and in 1721 that " a book shall be bought for the selectmen to keep a fair record of what money they raise, and how they dispose of it." These acts speak
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well for the care and prudence of the people, and merit the warmest gratitude of the antiquary and historian in later times.
From the selectmen's accounts we learn that in the year 1714 they paid bounties to Captain Hill and Samnel Dudley, Jr., on " five wolves' heads." These animals were so great a source of annoyance that the bounty paid for their destruction was raised by the town, two years afterwards, to two pounds a head.
In the year 1717 the selectmen paid to Peter Folsom, Jr., for work on the stocks, fifteen shillings and eight pence ; and to Samuel Goodhne for mending the glass in the meeting-house, one pound and eleven pence. Later payments for the same objects, especially the latter, appear on the selectmen's account books, with some frequency. The meeting-house windows must have been a burden on the rate-payers.
In the same year the province authorized an issue of paper money to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds, which was to be lent to inhabitants in small sums on approved landed security. The town chose Samuel Thing, Nicholas Gilman, Nicholas Gordon, Moses Leavitt and Jonathan Thing a committee to act with the representatives, in letting a portion of the money, in Exeter, and empowered a majority of them to appraise upon oath the value of the lands offered as security for such loans.
At the same meeting it was voted that Samuel Thing and Henry Dyer request Colonel John Bridger, his majesty's surveyor gen- eral, to mark the trees in the town which were fit for the king's service, " so that his majesty's subjects may go to work to get their livelihood." The law which reserved for masts for the royal navy the largest and finest growth of the forest, was a standing grievance to the colonists, as the language of the above vote implies, and led, as we shall see, to later trouble. In the same year the town for the first time voted compensation to their officers ; twenty shillings to each of the selectmen and five shillings to each of the assessors, and committee. The presumption is that before that time these officers had performed their duties gratuitously, regarding the honor of their positions as a sufficient recompense. It is, perhaps, needless to add that the fashion of payment, once set, has been pretty faithfully followed, from that time to this.
On March 22, 1722, the town voted to make the minister's rate by itself, to be paid in money ; and all other town charges to be paid in "peichers ;" an ineffectual attempt, probably, to write " specie." But specie at that time meant something quite differ-
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ent from gold and silver coin. It must have referred to articles of produce or merchandise at certain specified prices, for the vote proceeds to define the " specishers " (as the word is spelled this time) in which the town charges may be paid, as being " mer- chantable boards and joist at 40/- per M .; Indian corn at 3/ - per bushel ; Barley 3/6 ; Rye 4/ -; wheat 5/6; Red oak hhd. staves 30/ - per M .; White oak 40/ -; White oak bbl. 30/ -; good pork 4 d a lb ; beef at 3 d."
The accounts of the selectmen for the year 1721 show that they paid four shillings and sixpence for " a brazen head put on the black staff ;" and those of 1728 a like sum for " a black staff." In our days of republican simplicity it requires a moment's thought to realize that these entries refer to the official badge of the consta- ble, which was then a black rod surmounted by a royal crown of brass. Though we may smile at such insignia now, there was a deal of dignity and of authority too, in them, a hundred and fifty years ago.
At a meeting of the town, held September 28, 1731, a new meeting-house having been built, it was voted that the old one be taken down as soon as it could be with convenience, and that a court-house be built of the stuff of said old house. Theophilus Smith, Benjamin Thing and Jeremiah Conner were appointed a committee to " discourse with workmen " about taking down the old meeting-house and building a court-house, and to make report.
It was also voted that the town-house should be built forty feet long and twenty-five feet wide, and be set on the south side of the highway over against the meeting-house, as nigh the school-house as might be with conveniency to the town land; and that the court-honse be finished, so far as it could be done, by the first of March next, so that the court might sit in it.
This provision for a court-house, which in all probability was designed to be fitted up in the town-house building, was made in consequence of an act passed by the General Assembly in 1730, which provided for one term of the Inferior Court to be held in each year in Exeter, and gave the like privilege to Dover and to Hampton. Prior to this, all the courts in the province were held in Portsmouth, to the manifest inconvenience of parties who resided in the interior. Great efforts were made before and after this time, to give the inland towns a small share, at least, of the courts ; but the people of Portsmouth, aided by the influence of the provincial government, constantly resisted and obstructed the
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just legislation for the purpose, up to the time of the Revolution, when Exeter became in effect the capital of the State. It is not known whether under the law of 1730. even a single term of the Inferior Court was held outside of Portsmouth ; for the provincial officials had the address to induce the king in council either to refuse his assent to the law, or to order the repeal of it. The tradition is that this was done by the influence of the lieutenant governor and surveyor general, in revenge for the insult to his authority committed by the " mast-tree mob " in Exeter, hereafter to be mentioned.
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