CHAPTER XI.

NEW HAMPSHIRE, RHODE ISLAND, AND

CONNECTICUT.

1702.

IN New Hampshire Dudley was not unwillingly received as governor, when he came thither soon after returning to America. In that July 13. province the causes for resentment that made him unwelcome in Massachusetts had been little operative at the time of their occurrence, and had been lost sight of in the lapse of years. In a letter to the Ministry he commended in 1703. warm terms the liberality of the province, Dec. 19. "which bore the proportion truly but of the eleventh part to Massachusetts," yet had voted "five hundred pounds to begin the reform of their fortification" at the mouth of the Piscataqua, and had granted him an annual salary, for the whole period of his commission, of a hundred and sixty pounds, which he said was as much as they could afford, and as much for them as ten times the amount would be for Massachusetts. In other respects they satisfied him less, as he informed the Lords of Trade with much explicitness. The courts disappointed him by not condemning goods seized for alleged violation of the

1704. Navigation Laws. "So it is, my Lords, Feb. 11. that the judges are ignorant and the juries stubborn, that it is a very hard thing to obtain their just service to the crown, all which will be prevented if your Lordships please to let me have a judge of Admiralty settled here."

Next to the exposure to inroads from the French and Indian enemy, already described above, the main subject of concern to the people of New Hampshire was the pending controversy for their lands with Allen, the assign of John Mason. It was now about to be brought to an issue. Dudley was not unfavorable to the claim of the settlers; and the liberality of the Assembly, at the same time that it reciprocated his goodwill, bespoke his future favor.

Allen's son-in-law, Usher, succeeded in obtaining a reappointment to be lieutenant-governor of New Hampshire, notwithstanding the opposition of the agent of that province; and Partridge withdrew from public affairs to attend to the increase of his fortune at Newbury, where he 1702. died. Partridge had written to thank the April 17. Lords for appointing Dudley to be gov ernor of New Hampshire, and Dudley had ex1703. pressed himself to the same authority in

terms of commendation of his subordinate 1704. in office; but, on the other hand, he declared Feb. 29. himself pleased with the reappointment of Usher, and rendered to him a service which, as

1705. Dudley then stood, was more material, by

pronouncing a claim which he was urging on Massachusetts for a sum due in the settlement of his accounts, as former treasurer of that province, to be "very plain and just." Usher did his duty well in respect to the conduct of the war; but his antagonistic position in the controversy about the lands was fatal to his good standing with the Assembly, and they would do no more for himn than to pay the rent of two rooms for his official residence, when he came to New Hampshire, and provide penuriously for the cost of his journeys to and from Boston, where for the most part he continued to reside.

Before the Privy Council, to which he had appealed, Allen failed to make out his case, for want of being prepared to show that Mason, whose rights he represented as assign, had ever been in legal possession of the lands in dispute. The Council referred him back to the courts of New Hampshire, where accordingly, as a test question, he presented his claim by a writ of ejectment against Richard Waldron, for lands held by the latter in the town of Exeter. The people raised no question with Allen as to the property of lands lying beyond the bounds of their townships. But this concession would not satisfy him; he must have the towns which they had labored and suffered in cultivating and defending for two thirds of a century. Dudley had orders to demand from the jury a special verdict on some points, to the end of facilitating an ap

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peal to the Privy Council, if the verdict should be against the claimant. But, when he was expected at the trial, he was detained, not unwillingly, it was thought, first by an alarm of an Indian inroad, and then by illness. The jury decided against Allen, and gave no special verdict. avoid another troublesome appeal, the Assembly 1705. proposed a compromise. They offered to May 3. Allen that they would formally disclaim all pretension to any lands except such as were included in their four towns, and in Newcastle and Kingston, which were in progress of settlement; and that they would set off to him five thousand acres within those six districts in consideration of a quitclaim to be given by him of the rest, and pay him two thousand pounds "current money of New England" in two yearly instalments.

May 5.

17C6.

He died before this agreement, so advantageous for him, could be concluded, and the controversy was inherited by his son, who received permission from the Queen in Council to have a new trial, with the same instruction to the jury as to a special verdict, as had been disregarded the year before. At the trial the counsel for Allen rested his case on the alleged grants of the Council for New England to John Mason, whose rights, such as they were, they had no difficulty in proving to have descended to their client; and they produced depositions given twenty years before by several persons, then aged, to the effect that Mason had taken actual

1629.

The

possession. The material points of the argument on Waldron's part were, that the Council for New England never made a legally valid grant to John Mason of the lands in question, and that, on the other hand, Waldron's family had been settled seventy years on those lands with a title derived from four Indian chiefs, whose formal deed of conveyance to the minister Wheelwright and others was produced in court. jury returned a general verdict in Waldron's favor. They refused a special verdict, declaring that the occasion for it arose only when there was doubt as to law or fact, and that they had no doubt in respect to either. Before Allen's appeal to the Queen in Council was brought to any issue, his son and heir also died. The son's heirs were minors, and the claim was not renewed in their behalf; and so came to an end a quarrel which had subsisted since the foundation of the province. The question of the genuineness of the alleged Indian deed to Wheelwright has been largely discussed by modern antiquaries. That it was a forgery, must be now pronounced to be past dispute. At the time of the trial Usher denounced it as such, charging the act upon Richard Waldron. He argued, as has been done recently, that the Englishmen whose signatures were appended to the instrument were not in America so early.

The friendship between Usher and the governor was not lasting. Usher, who came to the govern