New Hampshire
Two more settlements remain to be considered before a survey of the
foundations of New England can be called complete. When the Reverend John
Wheelwright, the friend of Anne Hutchinson, was driven from Massachusetts
and took his way northward to the region of Squamscott Falls where he
founded Exeter, he entered a territory of grants and claims and rights of
possession that render the early history of New Hampshire a tangle of
difficulties. Out of a grant to Gorges and Mason of the stretch of coast
between the Merrimac and the Kennebec in 1622, and a confirmation of
Mason's right to the region between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua, arose
the settlement of Strawberry Bank, or Portsmouth, and accompanying it a
controversy over the title to the soil that lasted throughout the colonial
period. Mason called his territory New Hampshire; Gorges planned to call
the region that he received New Somersetshire; and both designations took
root, one as the name of a colony, the other as that of a county in Maine.
At an earlier date, merchants of Bristol and Shrewsbury had become
interested in this part of New England and had sent over one Edward
Hilton, who some time before 1627 began a settlement at Dover. The share
of the Bristol merchants was purchased in 1633 by the English lords and
gentlemen already concerned in the Connecticut settlement, for the
purpose, it may be, of furnishing another refuge in New England, should
conditions at home demand their withdrawal overseas. But nothing came of
their purchase except an unfortunate controversy with Plymouth colony over
trading boundaries on the Kennebec.
The men established on this northern frontier were often lawless and
difficult to control, of loose habits and morals, and intent on their own
profit; and the region itself was inhospitable to organized and settled
government. Yet out of these somewhat nebulous beginnings, four
settlements arose — Portsmouth (Masonian and Anglican), Dover (Anglican
and Puritan), Exeter and Hampton (both Puritan), each with its civil
compact and each an independent town. The inhabitants were few in number,
and "the generality, of mean and low estates," and little disposed to
union among themselves. But in 1638-1639, when Massachusetts discovered
that one interpretation of her charter would carry her northern boundary
to a point above them, she took them under her protecting wing. After
considerable debate this jurisdiction was recognized and the New Hampshire
and Maine towns were brought within her boundaries. Henceforth, for many
years a number of these towns, though in part Anglican communities and
never burdened with the requirement that their freemen be church members,
were represented in the general court at Boston. Nevertheless the Mason
and Gorges adherents — whose Anglican and pro-monarchical sympathies were
hostile to Puritan control and who were supported by the persistent
efforts of the Mason family in England — were able to obtain the
separation of New Hampshire from Massachusetts in 1678. Maine, however,
remained a part of the Bay Colony to the end of the colonial period.
Back to: Plymouth and New England Colonies
