mon consent of those at Plymouth and others living at different places about the bay and on the Piscataqua River. Captain StandishCaptain Shrimp, Morton calls him in his "New Canaan," where he gives ludicrous names to all who condemned his conduct—was sure to come to the front in such an emergency, and he, in command of a few men, was accordingly sent to Mount Wollaston, by common consent, to arrest the offender. Morton says they found him at Wessagusset, where, it seems, there still remained a small colony. They took him, he declares, by surprise; but he warily permitted them to eat and drink to satiety while he was carefully abstemious; when they, overcome by their indulgence, slept, he, vigilant and wide-awake, escaped by night to his own stronghold three miles distant. of Standish to arrest Morton. Thither Standish and his men followed him. Bradford in his "HisExpedition tory," says nothing of Wessagusset, but his and Morton's nar rative agree that at Mount Wollaston Morton closed his doors and prepared to receive the assailants. Means for defence were ample. There were four men in a sort of log fortress with loop-holes; on a table they laid out three pounds of well-dried powder, four guns, and three hundred bullets, and then they fortified themselves with "good aqua solis." The enemy were only nine strong, and the approach to the building was without cover. Standish and his men advanced steadily and in good order, "coming within danger," says Morton, "like a flocke of wild geese, as if they had bin tayled one to another as colts to be sold at a faire," and much blood would have flowed "if mine Host (Morton) should have played upon them out at his ports holes." But he chose not to play upon them. The "sonne of a souldier" contented himself with boasting that had he only had more men he "would have given Captaine Shrimpe (a quondam Drummer) such a wellcome, as would have made him wish for a Drume as bigg as Diogenes' tubb that he might have crept into it out of sight." He nevertheless surrendered without firing a shot. The only blood shed was from the nose of one of the defenders, who, from too much "aqua solis," stumbled against the sword of one of Standish's men. The son of a soldier seems to have been a coward as well as a braggart. After this almost bloodless victory, Morton was taken to Plymouth Morton sent and sent thence to England in the custody of John Oldham, to England. who, repenting of his former misdeeds, had been taken again into favor. For the time Morton escaped further punishment, and was permitted to return again to New England to plague the Puritans for years to come. He afterward fell into the hands, however, of Endicott whom he nicknamed Captain Littleworth - who not only sent him a second time to England, but, before he went, set him in 1630.] CHARTER OF 1630. 427 the stocks, and confiscated his goods at Mount Wollaston. He had previously burnt his house, and cut down the Maypole.1 Meanwhile, during all these later years of the first decade of the Plymouth Colony, "it pleased the Lord to give the plantation peace and health and contented minds." The Dutch of New Netherland sent pompous letters addressed "to the noble, worshipful, wise, and prudent Lords, the Governor and Councillors residing in New Plymouth" -"over high titles," said Bradford in his reply, "more than belongs to us, or is meete for us to receive ;" and an ambassador was sent-the secretary Rasierres-"with a noyse of trumpeters and some other attendants." But good fellowship was thereby established between the two colonies, and this was followed by trade and profitable trade, especially in wampum. This native currency the Indians of the East soon learned to value, though, as its manufacture by the tribes of Long Island from the shells of the quahaug and the periwinkle was practically unlimited, it soon produced such an inflation of values that, from being rated at first by the penny worth, it came at last to be sold by the fathom, and then to be prohibited altogether by colonial law. Extension of territory. Charter of 1630. But as the Pilgrims increased their trade, and grew in prosperity, they enlarged their borders. In 1628 they procured from the Plymouth Company a patent for lands on the Kennebec, and a settlement near the present town of Augusta, Maine, became a valuable dependency. In 1630 a new patent was granted to William Bradford and his associates, which, for the first time, defined the limits of the New Plymouth Colony, making its eastern boundary the ocean, from Cohasset River to Narragansett River; its western, a line drawn from the mouths of these rivers and meeting at the extreme western border of the Indian country, known as the Pokanoket country, which was the southeastern portion of the State of Massachusetts. And this patent also approved the grant on the Kennebec, defining it to be fifteen miles on each bank of that river. The colony, however, never procured the royal signature to this charter from the Plymouth Company. Their powers of government were derived from the compact signed in the cabin of the Mayflower, the day after her arrival in Cape Cod Harbor, and from the discipline of the church. In the censure of the brethren, and the authority drawn from the general assembly of the people, the law found sufficient and 1 Morton was accused of cruelty to the Indians and other crimes, and was arrested by Endicott on a writ from England. He continued his active hostility to the Puritans till his death in 1645 or 1646, having meanwhile been punished with a year's imprisonment in Boston for his libellous book, The New English Canaan, in which he had attacked, with a good deal of scurrilous humor, all the principal men of the colonies. Execution of John unquestioned authority. The exigencies of their own condition, the maintenance of social order and of mutual rights, the suggestions of common sense, and the dictates of their own consciences, made the body of the law. Not till the first serious crime was committed among them-the murder of a fellow-colonist by one Billington. John Billington was it thought necessary to seek for counsel, for precedent and sanction in English law. The advice of Governor Winthrop and other leading men of Massachusetts Bay was asked, as to what should be done under such novel and distressing circumstances, and the conclusion of the united council was that the man should die, and the land be purged of blood. 1 See Historical Memoir of the County of New Plymouth, pp. 227, 228, by Francis Baylies. CHAPTER XVI. PROGRESS OF DUTCH COLONIZATION. THE ORDER OF PATROONS ESTABLISHED IN NEW NETHERLAND. - DIVISION AND Policy of WITH the short-sighted selfishness that belongs to every great monopoly, the West India Company attempted to assure the growth and prosperity of their colony by means the least likely to secure that end. In the Netherlands the feudal system had grad- West India ually given way, as everywhere else in Europe, with the increasing intelligence of the people. Titles of nobility still existed, but they had come to be held in little esteem; and wherever great manorial privileges were still tolerated, it was rather as the right of landlords than of chiefs. But this system a great Netherland commercial company now proposed to reestablish upon the virgin soil of a new continent, where that pretence of right, which centuries of endurance were supposed to give it in the Old World, had no existence. The plan of the directors at Amsterdam was to establish seigniories in the hands of a few great proprietors, whose wealth and ambition would make them lords of people as well as of lands. To the Company, would be saved by this course, they argued, all the enormous cost and care of emigration, the necessity of supporting a small army of officers, and much of the expense of carrying on a government. The colony would increase in wealth and numbers through the labors of the great proprietors, while the chief function of the Company would be to absorb the growing trade and commerce, and to wax fat in opulence and power. Seal of New Netherland. The "Charter of Privileges and Exemptions," issued by the West India Company's College of Nineteen on June 7, 1629, provided that any person, a member of this Company (for to this restriction the College adhered even in their new measure), who should purchase of the Indians and found in any part of New Netherland except Manhattan, a colony of fifty persons over fifteen years of age, should be in all respects the feudal lord or patroon of the territory of which he should thus take possession. Not only should he have a full and inheritable title and proprietorship, but the power to establish officers and magis Proprietary privileges. trates in all towns and cities on his lands; to hold manorial courts, from which in higher cases the only appeal was to the director-general of New Netherland; to possess the "lower jurisdictions, fishing, fowling and grinding, to the exclusion of all others; to make use of all "lands, rivers, and woods, lying contiguous to his own;" in short, to hold and govern his great manors with as absolute rule as any baron of the Middle Ages, with the added advantage of distance from all other constituted authority except that of the corporation of which he was himself a member. The lands which such proprietors could take under these conditions might have a frontage of sixteen miles on one bank, or eight miles on each bank, of any navigable river; with the privilege of extending the estates "so far into the country as the situation of the occupiers would permit." The patroons could trade along the American coast within the Company's nominal jurisdiction, if they brought the goods obtained to the headquarters at Manhattan and paid a tariff of five per cent.; they could engage in the fur trade where the Company itself had |