162 COLONIZATION OF MAINE. tained of the expiring corporation a corresponding patent. The king might, without scruple, have confirmed the grant, and conferred upon him the powers of government, as absolute lord and proprietary; but the death of Mason, in November, cut off all the hopes which his family might have cherished of territorial aggrandizement and feudal supremacy. His widow in vain attempted to manage the colonial domains; the costs exceeded the revenue; the servants were ordered to provide for their own welfare; the property of the great landed proprietor was divided among them for the payment of arrears; and Mason's American estate was completely ruined. Neither king nor proprietary troubled the few inhabitants of New Hampshire; they were left to take care of themselves the best dependence for states, as well as for individuals. The enterprise of Sir Ferdinand Gorges, though sustained by stronger expressions of royal favor, and continued with indefatigable perseverance, was not followed by much greater success. We have seen a colony established, though but for a single winter, on the shores which Pring had discovered, and Weymouth had been the first to explore; and the cross had been raised by the French on Mount Desert. After the bays of New England had been more carefully examined by the same daring adventurer who sketched the first map of the Chesapeake, the coast was regularly visited by fishermen and traders. A special account of the country was one of the fruits of Hakluyt's inquiries, and was published in the collections of Purchas. At Winter Harbor, near the mouth of Saco River, Englishmen, under Richard Vines, again encountered the severities of the inclement season; and two years afterwards, the mutineers of the crew of Rocraft lived, from the autumn of 1618 till spring, on Monhegan Island, where the colony of Popham had anchored, and the ships of John Smith had made their station during his visit to New England. The earliest settlers, intent only on their immediate objects, hardly aspired after glory; from the few memorials 1623-1627.] COLLISION WITH FRANCE. 163 which they have left, it is not, perhaps, possible to ascertain the precise time when the rude shelters of the fishermen on the seacoast began to be 'tenanted by permanent inmates, and the fishing stages of a summer to be transformed into regular establishments of trade. The first settlement was probably made in 1626, the Maine," but a few miles from Monhegan, at the mouth of the Pemaquid. 66 on The settlement at Piscataqua could not quiet the ambition of Gorges. As a Protestant and an Englishman, he was almost a bigot, both in patriotism and in religion. Unwilling to behold the Roman Catholic church and the French monarch obtain possession of the eastern coast of North America, his first act with reference to the territory of the present state of Maine was, to invite the Scottish nation to become the guardians of its frontier. Sir William Alexander seconded a design, which promised to establish his personal dignity and interest; and, in September, 1621, he obtained, without difficulty, a patent for all the territory east of the River St. Croix, and south of the St. Lawrence. The whole region, which had already been included in the French provinces of Acadia and New France, was designated in English geography by the name of Nova Scotia. Thus were the seeds of future wars scattered broadcast by the unreasonable pretensions of England; for James now gave away lands, which, already, and with a better title on the ground of discovery, had been granted by Henry IV. of France, and had been immediately occupied by his subjects. The marriage of Charles I. with Henrietta Maria promised between the rival claimants of the wilds of Acadia such friendly relations as would lead to a peaceful adjustment of jarring pretensions. Yet, even at that period, the claims of France were not recognized by England; and a new patent confirmed to Sir William Alexander all the prerogatives with which he had been lavishly invested; and when, in 1627, the personal passions of the favorite, Buckingham, hurried England 164 EARLY CONQUEST OF CANADA. [1628, 1629. into an unnecessary and disastrous conflict with France, hostilities were nowhere successfully attempted, except in America. In 1628, Port Royal fell easily into the hands of the English; and Quebec also received a summons to surrender. Champlain, its commander, by an answer of proud defiance, concealed his weakness. But Richelieu sent no seasonable supplies; the garrison was reduced to extreme suffering and the verge of famine; and when, in 1629, the squadron of Sir David Kirk reappeared before the town, Quebec capitulated. Thus did England, one hundred and thirty years before the enterprise of Wolfe, make the conquest of the capital of New France; that is to say, she gained possession of a barren rock and a few wretched hovels. Not a port in North America remained in possession of the French; from Long Island to the Pole, England was without a rival. But before the conquest of Canada was achieved, peace had been proclaimed, in Europe, between the contending states; and, taking advantage of its conditions, the genius of Richelieu succeeded in obtaining the restitution, not of Canada only, but of Cape Breton and the undefined Acadia. The event has been frequently deplored; but misery ensued, because neither the boundaries of the rival nations were distinctly marked, nor the spirit of the compact honestly respected. While the eastern provinces of America were thus recovered by the firmness and ability of the French minister, a succession of patents, couched in vague language, distributed the territory from the Piscataqua to the Penobscot among various proprietors. The consequences were obvious. As the neighborhood of the indefinite possessions of France foreboded the border feuds of a controverted jurisdiction, so the domestic disputes about land-titles and boundaries threatened perpetual lawsuits. At the same time, enterprise was wasted by its diffusion over too wide a surface. Agriculture was hardly attempted. The musket and the hook and line were more productive than the imple 1635-1639.1 COLONIZATION OF MAINE. 165 ments of husbandry. Except for the wealth to be derived from the forest and the sea, the coast of Maine would not at that time have been tenanted by Englishmen; and this again was fatal to the expectations of the proprietaries; since furs might be gathered and fish taken without quitrents or title-deeds. Yet Gorges still clung, with unbending hope, to the project of territorial aggrandizement, and, undismayed by previous losses, and by the encroaching claims of the French, who had already advanced their actual boundary to the Penobscot, succeeded in soliciting the whole district that lies between the Kennebec and the boundary of New Hampshire, with the appointment, for himself, as governor-general of New England. An unforeseen accident prevented his embarkation for America; but he sent his nephew, William Gorges, to govern his territory. That officer repaired to the province without delay. Saco may have contained one hundred and fifty inhabitants, when, in 1636, the first court ever duly organized on the soil of Maine was held within its limits. Before that time, there may have been some voluntary combinations among the settlers themselves; but there had existed on the Kennebec no jurisdiction of sufficient power to prevent or to punish bloodshed among the traders. William Gorges remained in the country less than two years; the six Puritans of Massachusetts and Connecticut, who received a commission to act as his successors, declined the trust, and the infant settlements then called New Somersetshire were abandoned to anarchy, or to so imperfect a government, that of the events of two years no records can be found. Meantime a royal charter, in April, 1639, constituted Gorges, in his old age, the lord proprietary of the country; and his ambition immediately soared to the honor of establishing boroughs, framing schemes of colonial government, and enacting a code. The veteran royalist, clearly convinced of the necessity of a vigorous executive, had but dim conceptions of popular liberty 166 COLONIZATION OF MASSACHUSETTS. [1624. and rights; and he busied himself in making such arrangements as might have been expected from an old soldier, who was never remarkable for sagacity, had never seen America, and who, now in his dotage, began to act as a lawgiver for another hemisphere. CHAPTER XIV. COLONIZATION OF MASSACHUSETTS. SUCH was the condition of the settlements at the north at a time when the region which lies but a little nearer the sun, was already converted, by the energy of religious zeal, into a busy, well-organized, and even opulent state. The early history of Massachusetts is the history of a class of men as remarkable for their qualities and their influence on public happiness, as any by which the human race has ever been diversified. The merchants of the west continued their voyages to the islands of New England. In 1624, a permanent establishment was attempted near Cape Ann. A year's experience induced the company to abandon the unprofitable scheme. But Roger Conant, their agent, a man of extraordinary vigor, "inspired, as it were, by some superior instinct," and confiding in the active friendship of John White, a minister of Dorchester in England, succeeded in breathing a portion of his sublime courage into his three companions; and, making choice of Salem, they resolved to remain as the sentinels of Puritanism on the Bay of Massachu setts. The design of a plantation was ripening in the mind of White and his associates in the south-west of England. About the same time, some friends in Lincoln |