the distresses of Plymouth colony. Connecticut, which had contributed soldiers to the war, furnished the houseless with more than a thousand bushels of corn. "God will remember and reward that pleasant fruit." Boston did the like, for "the grace of Christ always made Boston exemplary " in works of that nature.

The eastern hostilities with the Indians had a different origin, and were of longer continuance. The news of the rising of the Pokanokets was, indeed, the signal for the commencement of devastations; and, within a few weeks, a border warfare extended over nearly three hundred miles. Sailors had committed outrages, and the Indians avenged the crimes of a corrupt ship's crew on the villages. There was no general rising of the Abenakis, or eastern tribes, no gatherings of large bodies of men. Of the English settlements, nearly one half were destroyed in detail; the inhabitants were either driven away, killed, or carried into captivity; for covetousness sometimes provoked to mercy, by exciting the hope of a ransom.

1676.

Aug. 11.

The escape of ANNE BRACKETT, grand-daughter of George Cleeves, the first settler of Portland, was the marvel of that day. Her family had been taken captive at the sack of Falmouth. When her captors hastened forward to further ravages on the Kennebec, she was able to loiter behind; with needle and thread from a deserted house, she repaired the wreck of a birchen bark; then, with her husband, a negro servant, and her infant child, she trusted herself to the sea in the patched canoe, which had neither sail nor mast, and was like a feather on the waves. She crossed Casco Bay, and, arriving at Black Point, where she feared to encounter Indians, and at best could only have hoped to find a solitude, how great was her joy, as she discovered a vessel from Piscataqua, that had just sought anchorage in the harbor!

The surrender of Acadia to the French had rendered the struggle more arduous; for the eastern Indians obtained supplies of arms from the French on the Penobscot. To defeat the savage enemy effectually, the Mohawks were invited to engage in the war; a few of them

1677.

took

1678.

up the hatchet but distance rendered co-operation impossible. After several fruitless attempts at Apr. 12. treaties, peace was finally established by Edmund Andros as the Duke of York's governor of his province beyond the Kennebec. The terms seemed to acknowledge the superiority of the Indians: on their part, the restoration of prisoners and the security of English towns were stipulated; in return, the English were to pay annually, as a quit-rent, a peck of corn for every English family.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE OVERTHROW OF THE CHARTER OF MASSACHUSETTS.

To protect the Catholic religion and establish the absolute power of the crown were the objects pursued by Charles II., from the time of his accession to the 1676. throne. The corresponding movements against the liberties of the colonies were marked by the same occasional hesitation and the same underlying consistency as those against the rights of English corporations and the English parliament. For fifteen or sixteen years after the restoration, there was no officer of the customs in the colony, except the governor, annually elected by the people; and during all that time he had never taken the oath which the navigation act of 1660 required, so that the acts of trade were but little regarded. During the disastrous Indian War, New England had protected itself from its own resources; jealous of independence, it never applied to the parent country for assistance. "You are poor," said the Earl of Anglesey, "and yet proud." The English ministry, contributing nothing to repair colonial losses, made no secret of its intention to "reassume the government of Massachusetts into its own hands," and while the ground was still wet with the blood of her yeomanry, the ruins of her villages were still smoking, and the Indian war-cry was yet ringing in the forests of Maine, the committee of the privy council for plantations "did agree that this was the conjuncture to do something effectual for the better regulation of that government, or else all hopes of it might be hereafter lost." In selecting an agent to make inquiries preliminary to decisive action, the choice fell upon Edmund Randolph, who at the same time was intrusted by Robert

June 10.

Mason with the care of his claims to New Hamp1676. shire. It was on the tenth of June, 1676, that the messenger arrived in Boston, menacing at once the territorial extension, the trade, and the charter of Massachusetts.

The emissary on his arrival waited immediately on Leverett the governor, and demanded that the letter which he bore from the king should with convenient speed be read to the magistrates. The governor received him with coldness, avowed ignorance of the officer whose signature as secretary of state was affixed to the letter, and denied the right of the king or of parliament to bind the colony by laws adverse to its interests. To complaints of the total neglect of the act of navigation, the honest Leverett answered: "The king can in reason do no less than let us enjoy our liberties and trade, for we have made this large plantation in the wilderness at our own charge, without any contribution from the crown.'

Randolph, who was received only as the agent for Mason, belonged to that class of hungry adventurers with whom America ultimately became so familiar. Now, on his return to England, after a residence of but six weeks in the New World, he exaggerated the population of the country fourfold, and its wealth in a still greater proportion, that he might encourage the avarice of his patrons in the court of Charles II. On his false reports, the English ministry grew more zealous to employ him; and, in the course of nine years, he made eight voyages to America.

The colony, reluctantly yielding to the direct commands of Charles II., resolved to send William Stoughton and Peter Bulkeley as its envoys to England; but, agreeably to the advice of the elders, circumscribed their powers" with the utmost care and caution." The oath of fidelity to the country was revived throughout the jurisdiction.

In a memorial 'respecting the extent of their territory, the general court represented their peculiar unhappiness, to be required, at one and the same time, to maintain before courts of law a title to the provinces, and to dispute with a savage foe the possession of dismal deserts. Remon

1677.

strance was of no avail. In 1677, a committee of the privy council, which examined all the charters, refused to decide on the claims of the resident settlers to the land which they occupied, but denied to Massachusetts the right of jurisdiction over Maine and New Hampshire. The decision was so manifestly in conformity with English law that the colonial agents attempted no serious defence.

These provinces being thus severed from the government of Massachusetts, King Charles was willing to secure them as an appanage for his reputed son, the kind-hearted, worthless Duke of Monmouth, the Absalom of that day, whose weakness was involved in a dishonest opposition to his father, and whom frivolous ambition at last conducted to the scaffold. It was thought that the united provinces would furnish a noble principality, with an immediate and increasing revenue. But before the monarch, whom extravagance had impoverished, could resolve on a negotiation, Massachusetts, through the agency of a Boston merchant, obtained possession of the claims of Gorges, by a

purchase and regular assignment. The price paid May 6. was twelve hundred and fifty pounds, about six thousand dollars.

It was never doubted that a proprietary could alienate the soil; it was subsequently questioned whether the rights of government could be made a subject of traffic. The assignment was the cause of a series of relations, which, in part, continue to the present day. In a pecuniary point of view, no transaction could have been for Massachusetts more injurious; for it constituted her a frontier state, and gave her the most extensive and most dangerous frontier to defend. But she did not, at this time, come into possession of the whole territory which now forms the state of Maine. France, under. the treaty of Breda, claimed and occupied the district from the St. Croix to the Penobscot, and regarded the Kennebec as the line of separation between its colonies and those of England; the Duke of York held the tract between the Penobscot and the Kennebec, pretending indeed to own the whole tract between the Kennebec and the St. Croix; while Massachusetts, as the successor to