CHAPTER while, complaints against the colony were multiplying. XIV. Gorges and Mason, grandsons of the grantees of Maine 1663. and New Hampshire, alleged that Massachusetts had oc

cupied their provinces. Gorton and other inhabitants of Rhode Island preferred the claim formerly pending before Cromwell, for damages sustained by the seizure of their goods and cattle at the time of their arrest and trial. Wrongs and encroachments were also alleged by the chiefs of the Narragansets, who prayed the king's interference and protection. Controversies had arisen as to the boundaries of Connecticut and Rhode Island on the one side, and of Rhode Island and Plymouth colony on the other, and as to the title to lands in that vicinity un1664. der purchases from the Indians. The king presently signified his intention to send out commissioners for hearing and determining all these matters-a piece of informa tion which occasioned no little alarm in Massachusetts, aggravated by the appearance of a large comet. A fast was proclaimed. The charter was intrusted to a select. committee of the General Court for safe keeping.

Aug

The commissioners selected by the king were those already mentioned in a previous chapter, Nichols, Carr, and Cartwright, sent with a small armament to take possession of New Netherland, to whom was added Samuel Maverick, a resident of Massachusetts, son of the first minister of Dorchester, and the more obnoxious on that account, being regarded as a traitor. The arrival of the commissioners at Boston, and their first intercourse with the magistrates, has been adverted to already in the history of New Netherland. The magistrates declared themselves unauthorized to raise troops for the expedition thither without the consent of the General Court. The commissioners declined to await the meeting of that body, and departed, advising the magistrates against

their return to take the king's letter into serious consid- CHAPTER eration.

XIV.

The court, which presently met, voted two hundred 1664 soldiers; but they were not needed, New Netherland Sept having already submitted. As one step toward compliance with the king's demands, it was enacted, that all freeholders twenty-four years of age, "rated at ten shillings to a single rate," and certified by the minister of their town to be "orthodox in their principles," and "not vicious in their lives," might be admitted freemen, though not church members. However useful in conciliating some of the more wealthy and well-disposed among the hitherto non-freemen, this law made no substantial change in the elective franchise. Comparatively few possessed the requisite amount of property, and the required certificate could only be obtained by those known to be thoroughly well affected. The court, at the same time, voted a remonstrance to the king against the appointment of the commissioners, as being a violation of their chartered rights; and they made an order prohibiting any appeals to their authority or exercise of it within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.

The people of Connecticut, well satisfied at the subjection of the Dutch, with whom they had been in such constant collision, and having boundary questions to settle both on the east and west, received the king's commissioners with all respect. Governor Winthrop, as we have seen in a former chapter, accompanied them to the conquest of New Netherland. After settling the boundaries of Connecticut and New York, of which the particulars will be stated hereafter, and leaving Nichols at New York as governor, Carr and Cartwright proceeded bec to Massachusetts to meet Maverick.

The hopes of the sectaries in that colony had

T.

CHAPTER far raised, that Thomas Gould, with eight others, after XIV. meeting for some time in secret, had formally organized 1664. a Baptist Church in Boston. Prosecutions were comMay 28. menced against its prominent members, who were first admonished, then fined for absence from public worship, then disfranchised, imprisoned, and presently banished. But still the organization contrived to survive, the first Baptist Church of Massachusetts. Still another inroad, not less alarming, was now made upon ecclesiastical uniformity. The commissioners, on their arrival, caused the English Church service to be celebrated at Boston— the first performance of that hated ceremonial in that Puritan town. Out of respect to the inveterate preju dices of the people, the surplice was not used. But the Liturgy alone was sufficiently distasteful.

The remonstrances of Massachusetts against the pow ers and appointment of the commissioners were esteemed in England unreasonable and groundless. Clarendon and others, to whom the magistrates had written, justified the commission, and recommended submission to it. Very little attention, however, was paid to this advice. The magistrates were sturdy and unbending; the commissioners were haughty, overbearing, and consequen tial.

Both parties disliked and suspected each other; and the correspondence between them soon degenerated into a bitter altercation.

Pending this correspondence, the commissioners made 1665. a visit to Plymouth and Rhode Island. The Plymouth people, anxious to obtain a charter, professed a willingness to comply with all the king's demands, as expressed in his letter to Massachusetts-demands, indeed, to which, according to their account, their existing practice in most points conformed. The commissioners settled the boundary controversy between Plymouth and Rhode

XIV.

Island by confirming to Plymouth all such townships on CHAPTER the Narraganset waters as had been granted and settled by that colony. They offered, also, their gratuitous serv- 1665. ices to obtain a royal charter for Plymouth, if the king might have the appointment of governor out of two or three persons to be named by the colonists. The Plymouth people, however, with many thanks, and great protestations of loyalty, chose rather "to be as they were."

What chiefly occupied the attention of the commissioners at this time was the decision of a complicated controversy as to the jurisdiction and property of the lands south of Providence and Warwick, including part of the late Pequod country and the whole district inhabited by the Narragansets. The Pequod lands having been claimed both by Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Commissioners for the United Colonies had assigned the tract west of Mystic River to Connecticut, and the tract 1658. east of it to Massachusetts, a partition never entirely Sept. 16 satisfactory to Connecticut. There could be no pretense that the charter of Massachusetts covered any part of this territory, and Connecticut now claimed, under the words of her new charter, as far east as Narraganset Bay, notwithstanding the express agreement of her agent, as set forth in the charter of Rhode Island, that the Pawcatuck should be esteemed the Narraganset River referred to in the Connecticut charter. Another claim was put forward to the whole district between Narraganset Bay and the Connecticut, on behalf of the heirs of the Marquis of Hamilton, under the old grant made to him by the Council for New England just previous to the surrender of the great New England patent. The property in the lands was also disputed no less than the right of jurisdiction. Humphrey Atherton, late su

CHAPTER perintendent of the Indian subjects of Massachusetts, had XIV. taken advantage of his official position to obtain from 1665. the Indians sundry large grants of land. The Commissioners for the United Colonies of New England, some five years before, had imposed on the Niantics, on the ground of their non-fulfillment of the treaty made with Major Willard, a fine of six hundred fathoms of wam1660. pum, and an armed force had compelled the chiefs tc Sept. 29. mortgage their whole territory for its payment. AtherOct. 13. ton, with some associates, had advanced the means to the 1662. Indians to pay off this mortgage, upon security, howev

er, of another, under which the mortgagees had already taken possession. But all these purchases were held void by Rhode Island, as having been made within her jurisdiction, but without her authority, and in contravention of her laws. The Narragansets, seeing themselves in danger of being stripped of their lands, had carried their complaints to the king. Pessacus required, in particular, that no strong liquors might be sold to his people.

After hearing the parties, the commissioners directed that the territory in dispute, including the whole Narraganset country, should constitute, under the name of KING'S PROVINCE, a separate district. The purchases and mortgage of Atherton, then in the hands of a company of Boston land speculators, were declared void, but the Indians were to pay back what they had received. This decision, however, did not end the matter. It was held invalid because it wanted the signature of Nichols, whose participation was essential to all decisions of the commissioners. Disputes, both as to jurisdiction and land titles, presently revived, and were carried on for the next fifty years with an acrimony which created much ill will between Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the members of the Atherton Land Company.