the charters to Connecticut and Rhode Island appeared to have sufficiently arranged some things and embroiled others, it was determined to send out Commissioners to take advantage of the opportunities which had been created, and, if possible, bring the aspiring colonists into subjection. Another business which had at the same time been in progress, while, for its own completion, it might conveniently be intrusted to the same hands, would also enable the court to enlist on its side some local resentments of long standing, and afford a reason for sending out a military force, which, in some case that might arise, would be useful to the Commissioners in pursuing the main object of their appointment. The King, reviving that claim to North America which his predecessors had founded on its discovery by the

be pursued by the Commissioners, agreeably to what were afterwards prescribed in their instructions. It is recommended that the agents to be sent shall proceed at first with caution and insinuation. The little they can obtain in this way "will give his Majesty a good footing and foundation for a further advance of his authority by new considerations and instructions to be framed here by such representations as shall be made upon the return of the Commissioners, or part of them, or letters from them." "It may be presumed that they will harden in their constitution, and grow on nearer to a commonwealth, towards which they are already well-nigh ripened, if, out of present tenderness, the attempt shall be neglected or deferred, whilst this and that government are at present under such and so many circumstances that look and promise fairly towards the effecting what is aimed at. If we consider present peace, present concurrence of patentees, present inclinations in the oppressed there, the

present settlements in relation to the trades of the plantations, and no present obstacle, which is like to be more favorable hereafter, or that scarce any future accident or state of affairs can in any probability render the reduction of that doubtful people more feasible than at this point of time they may be found to be by the easy methods here proposed, which, being rather means of insinuation than of force, cannot put his Majesty's interests there into a much weaker condition than they are at present, should they fail of their effect, surely the attempt is prudent, seasonable, and necessary, and the success will be of so manifold advantage to his Majesty and his dominions, that they seem worthy of present pursuit.”

Governor Pownall, if I mistake not, somewhere refers to Lord Clarendon as having pronounced the Colonies to have already "hardened into republics." I presume that Pownall had this paper in his mind.

the Duke

of York.

March 12.

Cabots, had lately given to his brother, James, Duke of York, all the country between the rivers ConPatent to necticut and Delaware, including Long Island, which Lord Clarendon had bought of Lord Stirling for his son-in-law. The Commissioners to New England were charged to take possession of that country for its new proprietor, and to require the Colonies to furnish military aid for this purpose. The grant to the Duke also conveyed to him the country between the rivers St. Croix and Kennebec.1

1643.

Nicolls, the principal Commissioner, was a man of honor. At the breaking out of the Civil War, when he was seventeen or eighteen years old, he gave up his studies at the University, and joined the King's standard, receiving the command of a troop of horse. While the royal family was in exile, he was attached to the person of the Duke of York, and served with him, first under Marshal Turenne, in the war of the Fronde, and afterwards under the Prince de Condé. At the Restoration, he was appointed one of the Duke's gentlemen of the bed-chamber; and now, when the lately constituted province, including New Netherland, should be reduced, he was to administer it as the proprietor's deputy.

Carr and Cartwright2 proved themselves incompetent to the delicate business with which they were intrusted. In some respects Maverick was eminently qualified for

1 I have never seen the Duke of York's patent entire. That part which relates to the boundaries has been printed by Trumbull (Hist., I. 266), and by Hough (Papers relating to the Island of Nantucket, &c., xiv., xv.).

* Sir Robert Carr, Bart., of Sleeford, Lincolnshire, married a sister of Sir Henry Bennett. (Collins, Peerage of England, Brydges's edit., IV. 129.) This connection may be thought to ex

plain his appointment. Carr's daughter married John Hervey, first Earl of Bristol. (Ibid., 152.) Carr was a free liver. (O'Callaghan, Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York, III. 69, 94, 107.) "Sir Robert Carr's, where it seems people do drink high." (Pepys, Diary, III. 314.) — Of Cartwright's antecedents I know nothing. He was said in Boston to be a Papist. (O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 94.)

it; in others, he was equally unfit. He knew perfectly the relations of the pending question. An inhabitant of New England before the charter government of Massachusetts was erected, he had watched, close at hand and with an intelligence sharpened by disaffection, the course by which that government had established, in all but the name, an independence of the parent country. No man better knew the strength or the weakness of that government. He would have been a more dangerous, had he been a less violent, enemy. With some excellent qualities, he had strong passions, and they had been stimulated in successive quarrels with the Magistrates. The Magistrates had made him remove from his island, when they were threatened by King Charles the First. They had fined and imprisoned him, when they were in alarm from the Presbyterian Parliament. At the Restoration, he lost no time in looking after his revenge; and the result was, that he was invested with ample powers for executing it, by being placed upon this commission.1

1 See Vol. I. pp. 233, 395; also see above, pp. 168, 175. Maverick had gone to England before the Restoration. (See above, p. 420.) The King seems to have been imposed upon, respecting him; “You being strangers and without any interest or dependence there," &c. (Commission, in Hazard, II. 638; O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 51.) Mr. Curwin, of Salem, met Maverick in London, in 1663 or 1664; and wrote home: "Mr. Maverick said, before all the company, that New England were all rebels, and he would prove them so, and that he had given in to the Council so." (Maine Hist. Coll., I. 301.) Lord Clarendon feared he would overdo his business: "If you should revenge any old discourtesies at the King's charge, and, as his Commissioner, should do anything upon the memory of past injuries, the King would take it very ill, and do himself

justice accordingly." (Clarendon to Maverick, March 5, 1665, in O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 92.) — The Commissioner, Samuel Maverick, has been commonly understood to be, not the primeval Maverick of Noddle's Island, but his son. But that question is positively settled the other way by a letter of Maverick's daughter, Mary Hooke, as well as by other considerations adduced by Mr. William H. Sumner, in his valuable History of East Boston (107, 155–157). On the other hand, I undoubtingly dissent from Mr. Sumner's opinion that Samuel Maverick was the son of the Reverend John Maverick of Dorchester. He founds it on an express assertion of Josselyn (Account of Two Voyages, &c., 252). But as to such a point, I cannot admit the testimony of that writer, (who was but a transient visitor at Boston,) impugned, as in this in

1664. July 20.

Three days before the arrival of their associates at Boston, Maverick and Carr landed at Portsmouth on the Piscataqua.1 There they still remained, when Nicolls and Cartwright, on the third day after disembarking, had a conference with the Magistrates. They presented a Letter addressed to the Governor by the King; his Commission to themselves; and a portion of the Instructions which were to guide their action under it.

Royal Letter

setts.

April 23.

The Letter declared one object of the embassy to be, to obtain information for the King's guidance in his endeavors to advance the well-being of his subjects to Massachu- in New England; another, to "suppress and utterly extinguish those unreasonable jealousies and malicious calumnies which wicked and unquiet spirits perpetually labored to infuse into the minds of men, that his subjects in those parts did not submit to his government, but looked upon themselves as independent upon him and his laws;" another, to compose such differences as existed upon questions of boundaries between different Colonies, - questions perhaps left on purpose to create a pretext for interfering; another, to assure the native tribes of his protection; another, to overthrow the usurped authority of the Dutch; and another, to "confer upon the matter of his former letter" sent by Bradstreet and Norton, "and their answer thereunto, . . . . . of which he would only say that the same did not answer his expectations, nor [the] profes sions made by their messengers." The Letter required

stance it is, more or less, by every other known fact bearing upon it.

1 Maverick wrote immediately to Breedon, who was at Boston: "Two of our ships arrived here this afternoon. ..... I shall desire you to repair to the Governor and Council, and advise them to take care how they dispose of such things as may be out of their bounds, and not fit for them to take cognizance of, his Majesty's Commissioners being at

length come into these parts, of whom you know me to be one." (O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 65.) Much as Maverick had had means of knowing of the "Governor and Council," he had not a little yet to learn. "Mr. Samuel Maverick, on his first arrival in Piscataqua River, menaced the constable of Portsmouth while he was in the execution of his office." (Mass. Rec., IV. (ii.) 168.)

that it should be forthwith communicated to the Council, and, within twenty days, to a "General Assembly.” 1

April 25.

The Commission, which was of two days' later date, gave authority to the persons therein named, or to any three of them, -or to any two, Colonel Nicolls Commission being one and having a casting vote,-"to visit of the agents. all and every the several Colonies" of New England, and "to hear and receive, and to examine and determine, all complaints and appeals in all causes and matters, as well military as criminal and civil, and proceed in all things for the providing for and settling the peace and security of the said country, according to their good and sound discretions, and to such instructions as they should from time to time receive." 2

Of Instructions there were two sets, with the contents of both of which it is not improbable that the Governor of Massachusetts was acquainted; for it is certain Their Inthat he had means of obtaining secret intelli- structions. gence. One of these papers abounded in professions of the respect and friendship entertained by the King for that Colony. It directed the Commissioners (with the help of maps, with which they were to require the authorities to furnish them) to define the lines of boundary of the several chartered jurisdictions, subject, however, to the approval of the King;- to give redress to any native princes who had been injured; — to report "what progress had been towards the foundation and maintenance of any college or schools for the education of

1 Hazard, II. 634. * Ibid., 638.

"The copy of his Majesty's signification to the Massachusetts Colony was surreptitiously conveyed over to them by some unknown hand, before the original came to Boston; and formerly the very original of Mr. Maverick's petition to the King and Council concerning the Massachusetts Colony was stolen out of the Lord Arlington's office

in Whitehall by one Captain John Scott, and delivered to the Governor and Council at Boston. This I affirm positively to be true, though, when I questioned Scott upon the matter, he said a clerk of Mr. Williamson's gave it him." (Letter of Nicolls to Morrice, in O'Callaghan, Documents, &c., III. 136.) The purloiner could have been no other than the versatile Long-Island knave. (See above, p. 564, note.)