that, having come from England to escape the lord bishops, he would not submit to the lord brethren.1 Whether this story is true or not, it is at least significant of the position of these independent settlers. We may be sure that, if they had any sympathy with Puritanism, they would not have remained exposed to the risks and discomforts of isolation. As time went on, and as New England became a settled country, their position became untenable. Of the outlying plantations, those north of the Merrimac formed the germ of Maine and New Hampshire, those south were swallowed up by the Puritan colony of Massachusetts.

1 This speech of Blackstone is quoted by Mr. Young (Chronicles of Massachusetts, p. 170), on the authority of Cotton Mather. I have not been able to find the original reference in that writer. I find the words ascribed to Blackstone in a tract entitled An Account of Providence published in the Massachusetts Historical Collection, 2nd series, vol. ix. p. 166, and ascribed to Stephen Hopkins, governor of Rhode Island from 1757 to 1766.

CHAPTER III.

THE SETTLEMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS.1

In the last chapter I spoke of various scattered plantations which sprang up in the neighbourhood of

1 Nearly all the writings which bear on the early history of Massachusetts have been collected by Mr. Young in a volume called Chronicles of Massachusetts, a companion to that for Plymouth, to which I have already referred. The book consists of letters which passed between leading members of the Massachusetts Company, the records of the Company, so far as they are extant, one or two pamphlets, and a sort of chronicle entitled Records of Charlestown, taken in the year 1664 from the town archives. The records of the Company are also published in the third volume of the Archæologia Americana, with a very full introduction by Mr. Haven, containing biographical notices of all the members of the Company. The records of the colony down to 1680 have been collected and edited in a very complete form by Mr. Shurtleff. Of the chronicles and biographies from which our knowledge of New England history is so largely drawn I shall have occasion to speak in my text. By far the most valuable of them is Winthrop's History of New England. It is cast into the form of a diary or chronicle. This work, like Bradford's History of Plymouth, remained in manuscript for many years. In 1790 it was printed at Hartford. A new edition, with very valuable biographical notes, was published by Mr. Savage in 1825. This was re-edited, with further additions, in 1853. It is to this edition that I refer. A life of Winthrop, by his descendant, Mr. Robert C. Winthrop, appeared in 1869. In addition to its literary merit and conspicuous accuracy, it has value as containing several of Winthrop's letters and manuscripts hitherto unpublished.

Of the early New England writers two deserve special notice. One is William Wood, the author of New England's Prospect, published in 1634. The writer was evidently an ardent believer in colonization and keenly interested in America. But it is also clear that he had no special sympathy with the founders of Massachusetts, either on religious or political grounds. His book cannot be better described than in the words of the title-page, A true, lively, and experimental description of that part of America commonly called

Plymouth between 1620 and 1630. In addition to those mentioned, there was one destined to have a far more The Dor- lasting influence, and to serve in some measure venturers, as the foundation on which the greatest of the Puritan colonies was built.

chester Ad

In 1623 a small private company of merchants, all or most of them inhabitants of Dorchester, who had been accustomed to send fishing vessels every year to the coast near the Kennebec, bethought them of New England, both as it stands to our new-come English planters and to the old native inhabitants. Mr. Young has embodied a part of the book in his collection. The whole has been republished by the Prince Society, with a short preface by Mr. Charles Deane.

The other is that singular work, The Wonder-working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New England. This was published anonymously, but the authorship has been universally ascribed to Captain Edward Johnson, of Woburn, in Massachusetts. It was originally printed in London in 1654, with the second title of A History of New England from the English Planting in the yeere 1628 until the yeere 1652. Five years later it was shamelessly pirated and published without acknowledgement by Ferdinando Gorges, grandson of Sir Ferdinando, in a collection of pamphlets entitled America Painted to the Life. Since then it has been reprinted twice, firstly in the second series of the Massachusetts Historical Society's Collection, and then with a very careful and elaborate preface by Mr. W. F. Poole. Mr. Poole has gone very fully into the questions arising out of the authorship of this book. I shall have more to say of it when I come to deal with the literature of New England. Both Wood and Johnson are very fully criticized by Mr. Tyler in his History of American Literature.

The fourth and fifth series of the Massachusetts Historical Society's Collection contain a number of letters written by or to leading men in New England during the seventeenth century. These are a mine of valuable information.

Of later authorities the principal is Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts. The writer was Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts from 1758 to 1771, and Governor from 1771. In 1774 he was virtually superseded by General Gage, and never after exercised any authority in the colony. In 1764 he published a history of the colony from its foundation. His work is clear and methodical, and he had access to many valuable documents. Hubbard's History of New England is seldom more than a reproduction of Winthrop and Morton. Here and there it preserves valuable scraps of information, probably derived from Conant, who was personally known to Hubbard. The book remained in manuscript till 1815, when it was printed as the fifth and sixth volumes of the second series of the Massachusetts Historical Collection.

1 The doings of the Dorchester Adventurers are related in John White's Brief Relation of the Occasion of the Planting of this Colony (Young, M. C.).

1623-5

SETTLEMENT AT CAPE ANN.

111

establishing a permanent station to help them in loading their vessels and in getting supplies for the crews. There was something of a spiritual purpose in the undertaking at the outset, since one of the objects was to maintain a minister for the fishermen along the coast, who during their stay there were wholly without religious teaching.

Fishing station at

Cape

In 1623 the partners sent out a ship of fifty tons. By some mishap she was delayed in sailing, and did not reach the coast till six weeks after the opening of the regular fishing season. The master, thinking probably that it was too late. to begin, turned southwards, and, finding the fishing in Massachusetts Bay good, landed fourteen men to form a settlement at Cape Ann.

Ann

The territory thus occupied was subject to a complicated tenure. Originally granted by the Plymouth council to the Earl of Sheffield, it had been by him assigned to some of the Plymouth adventurers, who in turn had admitted the Dorchester merchants, either as tenants or in some kind of partnership. It is not easy to make out the exact relationship between the parties; but we can at least see that each had an interest in the fisheries at Cape Ann, and that the arrangement was unsatisfactory to the men of Plymouth. In 1625 a dispute arose over a fishing stage, built by the Plymouth settlers, and used in their absence by a certain Hewes, who was acting for the Dorchester partners. Standish was sent on behalf of Plymouth to protest against this intrusion. The rival claimants would have come to

1 The original grant of Cape Ann by Lord Sheffield to Cushman and Winslow, as representatives of the Plymouth colonists, is still extant, and has been printed in America with a preface by Mr. Wingate Thornton (Palfrey, vol. i. p. 222). Smith (Gen. Hist. p. 703) says, 'At Cape Ann there is a plantation beginning by the Dorchester men which they hold of those of New Plymouth, who also by them have set up a fishing work.' Bradford, pp. 160, 168.

blows if it had not been for the good offices of Roger Conant, an independent settler, who had at one time lived at Plymouth, but had withdrawn out of dislike of their principles of rigid separation.' He succeeded in arranging a compromise by inducing Hewes and his party to build a fresh stage.1 About the same time Conant was appointed by the Dorchester partners as their manager. Lyford was associated with him as minister of the settlement, and Oldham was invited to join them as trading agent, but preferred to be independent. The silence of the Plymouth chroniclers may be taken as evidence of the good character of Conant, but the presence of Lyford and Oldham could not fail to beget unfriendly relations between Plymouth and the new settlement.

In 1626, after three years' trial, the Dorchester adventurers came to the conclusion that their settlement was an unprofitable undertaking. The partnership was dissolved, and the shipping and stock-intrade sold. Most of the settlers returned, and Conant was left with the cattle and with three servants whom he with difficulty persuaded to stay. Since the fishery was abandoned there was no motive for remaining on the exposed promontory of Cape Ann. Accordingly, Conant withdrew south to the safer harbourage of Naumkeag, or, as it was soon afterwards named, Salem.3

This is told by Hubbard (p. 111). His point of view is peculiar. 'Captain Standish,' he says, 'had been a soldier in the Low Countries and had never entered the school of our Saviour Christ, or of John the Baptist. His harbinger, or, if he was ever there, had forgot his first lessons, to offer violence to no man, and to part with the cloak rather than needlessly contend for the coat, though taken away without order.' Massachusetts showed but little respect for that 'lesson 'in her dealings with her neighbours, though she gave them ample opportunities for practising it themselves.

Hubbard, p. 107.

3 Conant's proceedings are told by Hubbard, pp. 107, 108. For the naming of Salem, see Young, M. C., p. 23.