CHAPTER XIV.

IPSWICH AND THE ANDROS GOVERNMENT.

Before the Indian war was over, another attack on the civil liberties of the Colony began to be evident. Its mercantile condition was prosperous. Ships were built, the products of the forests and fisheries were sent to many foreign ports, and large imports were returned. The Navigation Laws were not enforced, it was claimed, and natural irritation was aroused among the merchants and manufacturers of England, whose goods were not purchased by the Colonies. Massachusetts was "the most prejudicial plantation to the kingdom" it was affirmed, because of its sharp competition in exports with the mother country. The sturdy independence of the Colony was a constant affront to the King. Gov. Leverett had been a captain of horse under Cromwell, and his dislike of royalty was not concealed. The neglect of the General Court to reply to the King's letter in 1666 was still remembered.

The King and Court naturally resented the disrespect of the Colony. The merchants clamored for repressive action. The Mason and Gorges faction was always ready to press its claims. This grievance reached back over many years.

Sir Ferdinando Gorges had secured a charter in 1639, constituting him Lord Proprietary of the Province of Maine, bounded by the Piscataqua, the Kennebec and the Ocean. A few towns were settled, and a show was made of settling a colony. His eldest son, John, made no attempt to establish his supposed rights, but John's son, Ferdinando, claimed authority. The Province of Maine, however, was annexed to Massachusetts by the choice of the various settlements between the years 1652 and 1658. The Attorney General of England declared in 1675 that Gorges had a good title to the Province, and the same official confirmed the title of Robert Mason to New Hampshire.

As early as March, 1622, Capt. John Mason had obtained a grant of the lands lying between the little river, which flows into the ocean at Naumkeag, now Salem, and the Merrimac. When Sir Henry Rosewell, John Endicott and others obtained their grant in 1628, it extended from the Atlantic to the Western Ocean, and from a line three miles north of the Merrimac to a line three miles south of the Charles. It was evident that the later charter, under which the Massachusetts Colony was settled, included the territory, which had been already ceded to Mason. Mason's son, John, was a principal member and Secretary of the Council for New England, and he used all his influence until his death to secure the annulling of the Massachusetts Bay Charter. The decision of the Attorney General, that his son, Robert, had a valid title was a decisive victory for the persistent claimant.

On the tenth of June, 1676, a ship arrived in Boston, bringing Edward Randolph, who had come as a special messenger from the King with a letter to the turbulent Colony. The fact that he was a relative of Robert Mason was ominous of impending harm. This letter acquainted the magistrates with the charges made by Gorges and Mason, of "the wrongs and usurpations of Massachusetts," and the ill-respect they showed His Majesty, and demanded that agents should be sent over to answer these charges. Randolph was dealt with very cavalierly by the bluff old Governor, and soon returned to England, but Bulkeley and Stoughton followed him at once as agents from the Colony.

Upon his arrival, Randolph published a report of his two months' observations in New England, entitled, "An Answer to several Heads of Inquiry concerning the Present State of New England." Though he was a prejudiced observer, his remarks on the civil-laws, the small number of the freemen (only about one sixth of the adult male population), the military force, the economical resources and employments, are of great interest. But chief interest attaches to his declaration concerning the government. "Among the Magistrates," he wrote "some are good men and well affected to his Majesty, and would be well

1 Hutchinson Collection, p. 477 et seq.

satisfied to have his Majesty's authority in a better manner established; but the major part are of different principles, having been in the government from the time they formed themselves into a commonwealth. These direct and manage all affairs as they please; of which number are Mr. Leverett, Governor; Mr. Symonds, Deputy Governor; Mr. Danforth, Mr. Tyng, Major Clarke, and Major Hathorne . . . The most popular and well principled men are Major Denison, Mr. Bradstreet and Mr. Dudley in the Magistracy; and of military men Major Savage, Captains Curwin, Saltonstall, Brattle, Richards, Gillam, Mosely, Majory, Champernoon, Shapleigh, Phillips, with many others who only wait for an opportunity to express their duty to his Majesty."1

Randolph's characterization of Denison, Bradstreet and Dudley, as "popular and well principled men," marks them as royalists, who had little sympathy with the sturdy coloniais, who stood for their independence of King and mother land. Denison's attitude in the critical moments of the year 1666, it will be remembered, was conspicuously at variance with the dominant feeling, and his aristocratic tendencies became more and more pronounced as the conflict grew more evident. Deputy Governor Symonds was equally sturdy and uncompromising as the advocate of liberty and independence. Around these as leaders, two distinct political parties, we may believe, grew up in our Town of Ipswich.

The omission of one name among the military men is of more than passing moment, that of Major Appleton. His brilliant. military record, far above that of any of those whom Randolph mentions, had not been forgotten in the few months that had elapsed, since the eventful conflicts at Hatfield and Hadley and the Narragansett fort. Randolph's silence with reference to him. is more than suggestive that Major Appleton stood with his townsman, the Deputy Governor, in pronounced and fearless opposition to the Crown, and that he was already an object of suspicion and prejudice.

The agents replied to Randolph's charges, but it was not easy to allay the irritation of the King and his Councillors.

1 Hutchinson Collection, pp. 477-501.

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