Fall of the New Haven. The question had many complications. Both Connecticut and New Haven had exercised jurisdiction over portions of Long Island. The charter of 1662 extinguished the New Haven colony by annexing it to Connecticut, but the republic of New Haven people had resisted this provision. Stamford posed for the moment as an independent republic, but Connecticut claimed jurisdiction over Stamford and over Westchester County as well. The action of New Haven tended to simplify matters. By the Duke's charter New York would have swallowed that colony. So between two unpalatable cups New Haven chose the less bitter. The "Christless rule" of democratic Connecticut was not so bad as the equally Christless rule of despotically governed New York. New Haven preferred to submit to the Winthrop charter. Everything now depended upon the justice and wisdom of Nicolls; his representations would have great weight with the Duke of York and the king. Had he insisted upon the Connecticut River boundary he would probably have got it. But such a disregard for the Winthrop charter seemed to him both dishonourable and contrary to public policy, and he soon accepted a boundary line which seemed fair to all parties. Connecticut was to have Stamford, but Westchester County was to belong to New York. The dividing line was to start at Mamaroneck Creek and run north-northwest until it should inter- necticut boundary. sect the southern boundary of Massachusetts, keeping always as much as twenty miles distant from the Hudson River. This sounded The Con reasonable enough, but people's knowledge of American geography was still very slender. New York historians have accused the Connecticut commissioners of playing a trick upon Governor Nicolls. Such charges are easy to make, but difficult to prove. It does not seem likely that the Connecticut men, had they correctly conceived the geography of the case, would have proposed a line so ridiculous as to invite speedy exposure. A line starting at Mamaroneck Creek and running northnorthwest would have crossed the Hudson River at Peekskill and would have intersected the prolonged boundary of Massachusetts near the northwestern corner of Ulster County, five-and-thirty miles west of the river! The error was soon discovered, and was rectified in 1683, when the boundary was placed very nearly in its present position, though it was long before all questions connected with it were settled. This decision furnished a basis for determining afterwards the western boundary of Massachusetts and still later that of Vermont. On the other hand, the whole of Long Island, having been expressly mentioned and given a central place in the grant to the Duke of York, was declared to be his. Nicolls named it Yorkshire and divided it into three ridings. Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard were likewise annexed Dukes to New York, and so remained until Cornwall. 1692, when they were handed over to Massachusetts. The name of Dukes County still Yorkshire, County, and 1 See, e. g., Brodhead's History of the State of New York, ii. 56. commemorates the brief season when Martha's Vineyard was the property of James Stuart, Duke of York. The island of Pemaquid also, with a district of mainland between the Kennebec and St. Croix rivers, called the County of Cornwall, was included in James Stuart's proprietary domain; but this, with all the rest of Maine, was added to Massachusetts after the accession of William and Mary. Cartwright sails for but lands England, in Spain. While Nicolls was busy settling boundaries and making the change from Dutch to English rule as pleasant as possible for all parties concerned, his colleagues Cartwright and Maverick were wasting breath and losing their tempers in the effort to outwit or browbeat the magistrates and parsons at Boston, such men as Bellingham and Norton, Leverett and Simon Willard. In the summer of 1665 Cartwright sailed for England, carrying with him papers tending to convict the Massachusetts people of disloyalty. With this evidence he hoped to persuade the king to rescind their charter; but in midocean he was captured by a Dutch cruiser, who seized all his papers and set him ashore in Spain, jocosely remarking that the climate would cure the gout under which he was groaning. By the time Cartwright arrived in London the king was too busy with the Dutch war to molest Massachusetts. Thus the English capture of New Amsterdam, with the resulting complications, would seem to have given a fresh lease of life for twenty years to the charter of the stiff-necked Puritan republic. After Cartwright's departure, Maverick stayed some time in Boston, ready to welcome the news of a quo warranto; but none such came. In January, 1667, Sir Robert Carr came to Boston from Delaware, intending to embark for England. One cold Saturday evening Carr and Maverick, with half-a-dozen boon companions, had grown some Pleasant what noisy over a steaming bowl of grog at the Ship Tavern, when a constable stepped in and told them to break up and go home. They were desecrating the Sabbath, which it was then the fashion to regard as beginning at sundown of Saturday. But the company defied the constable and drove him away with blows. On the next Saturday evening the party again assembled at the tavern, but prudently adjourned across the street to the house of a merchant named Kellond, where another constable, Arthur Mason, found them in a hilarious mood. He told them it was well for them that they were in a private house, for had he found them across the way he would have haled them off to prison. Angry words ensued, in the course of which Carr said that it was he who beat the constable, and he would do it again. Mason retorted that it was lucky for the party that he was not the constable who found them at the tavern. "Sir Robert asked if he dare meddle with the king's commissioners. Yes,' says Mason, and if the king himself had been there I would have carried him away'; upon which Maverick cried out, 'Treason! Mason, thou shalt be hanged within a twelvemonth.' Sir Robert Carr spake to Sir Thomas Temple and some others of the company, to 6 6 take notice of what passed, and the next day Maverick sent a note to Mr. Bellingham the governor, charging Mason with high treason for the words spoken." 1 The governor behaved with tact and bound Mason over with sureties to answer at the next court. Presently Maverick, whose wrath had had time to cool, asked permission to withdraw his charge, inasmuch as he felt satisfied that Mason's words, though "rash and inconsiderate," were not malicious and indicated no "premeditated design against his Majesty's government. Bellingham astutely replied that "the affair was of too high a nature for him to interpose in." The sagacious grand jury found simply "that the words charged were spoken," and the verdict of the court was that Mason should be "admonished in solemn manner by the governor. Thus were the skirts of Massachusetts cleared of any insinuations of complicity with treason in which gossip-mongers might indulge. Hutchinson is right in saying that though the anecdote may seem trivial, it is full of instruction. As for the pot-valiant Sir Robert Carr, he sailed for England and died suddenly the day after landing. Maverick found the social atmosphere of Boston too austere, and was glad to remove to New York and accept from the duke the present of a house on Broadway, where he seems to have spent the remainder of his days. The feeling of Nicolls toward Boston may be inferred from his remark, "Our time is lost upon men who are puffed up with the spirit of independ 1 Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts Bay, Boston, 1764, i. 254. |