such persons and the friends whom they had left in New England, it is inconceivable that there should not have been a frequent interchange of information and advice.

claim of

Massachu

Effects followed of less general importance than the arrest and refluent tide of emigration, but such as were not without influence on the condition of the new country. It was no time for measures in England to secure Territorial the claim of Mason's heirs in New Hampshire; and Lord Brooke and Lord Say and Sele had no setts. longer leisure for attention to their affairs in the same quarter.1 With the more freedom Massachusetts pushed its boundary in that direction. The charter of the Massachusetts Company, literally interpreted, endowed it with nearly all the territory of the present State of New Hampshire; for the most northerly source of the waters of the Merrimack is in the White Mountains. And even at this early time it was well known that a parallel of latitude drawn three miles north of every part of that river enclosed the settlements at and near the mouth of the Piscataqua.2 Massachusetts had had some regard to this pretension, in building her house at Hampton; 3 but the course of events determined that she should have no occasion to make a forcible assertion of the claim.

On Underhill's return to Dover after his submission to the Boston church, he set himself to defeat a negotiation which had been on foot for annexing that settlement to the jurisdiction of Massa

Jeremiah Holland, John Birden, and Abraham Walver. More than half of these were graduates of Harvard College in its first six years.

1 Lord Brooke was killed while besieging the Cathedral close of Lichfield in 1643. Scott says (Marmion, cant. 6):

"Fanatic Brooke

The fair Cathedral stormed and took."

1640.

Clarendon, however, who knew the
man, though he liked his politics no
better than the poet did, could say:
"They who were acquainted with him
believed him to be well-natured and
just." (History, Book VI.)

2 See above, p. 287.
3. See above, p. 516.

Disorders in

1

chusetts; and some treacherous proceedings of his to this effect became known at Boston. At Exeter, New Hamp-"one Gabriel Fish was detained in the officers' shire. hands for speaking against the king." The magistrates of that feeble settlement had probably felt obliged to take this step for appearances' sake; but, in view of the Puritan tendencies of the time, they had seen at once the responsibility which they assumed, and had gone to "the Bay to take advice what to do." Underhill seized upon this occasion to display his lately conceived loyalty, by a measure for preventing that release of Fish which he anticipated that the advisers in the Bay would recommend. "To ingratiate himself with the state of England, and with some gentlemen at the river's mouth, who were very zealous that way, and had lately set up Common Prayer,2 &c., he sent thirteen men armed to Exeter to fetch" the prisoner to Dover. This, and the part he had taken in obstructing the movement for a union with Massachusetts, gave offence to the majority of his neighbors, who began "consulting to remove him from his government." Hearing of their purpose, he could not refrain, but came and took his place in the Court," which they had desired him not to do; "and, though he had offered to lay down his place, yet when he saw they went about it, he grew passionate, and expostulated with them, and would not stay to receive his dismission, nor would be seen to accept it, when it was sent after him. Yet they proceeded and chose one Roberts to be President of the Court, and soon after they returned back Fish to Exeter, which," says Winthrop, "was considerately done of them."

"3

1 "Whereas he himself was the Mr. Emmanuel Downing, and Capmover of them to break off their tain Edward Gibbons were appointed agreement with us, he had written to to treat with the three Committees from our Governor, and laid it upon the the town of Dover upon Piscataqua.” people, especially upon some among (Mass. Col. Rec., I. 276.) them." (Winthrop, I. 327.) — November 5, 1639, "The Deputy-Governor,

2 See above, p. 523, note 1.
3 Winthrop, I. 327.

"Soon after this the captain came by water into the Bay, to tender (as he said) satisfaction to the church. But the church, not being satisfied of his repentance, would not admit him to public speech. So, after one week, he returned home."1 Before the end of many months, however, "being brought, by the blessing of God on the church's censure of excommunication, to remorse for his foul sins," he obtained leave to come to Boston, where, "upon the lecture-day, after sermon," he made a full avowal of his offences, and was relieved by the church from his excommunication, and by the General Court from his sentence of banishment.

Sept. 3.

Oct. 22.

In the month after this transaction, and perhaps through apprehension of its influence on Underhill's mind, certain planters at Dover, to the number of forty-one, entered into the first formal compact which had there been made, confederating together to be governed by the laws of England, and by other laws to be enacted by a majority of the settlers, till such time as the king's government should prescribe some different organization.3 Among the names subscribed to this document, the first is that of Thomas Larkham, who had just come with a new contribution to the ferment- Thomas ing elements at Dover. He "had been a minis- Larkham.

1 Winthrop, I. 328.

2 "He came in his worst clothes, (being accustomed to take great pride in his bravery and neatness,) without a band, in a foul linen cap pulled close to his eyes; and, standing upon a form, he did, with many deep sighs and abundance of tears, lay open his wicked course, his adultery, his hypocrisy, his persecution of God's people here, and especially his pride (as the root of all, which caused God to give him over to his other sinful courses) and contempt of the magistrates.

He

appeared as a man worn out with sorrow, and yet he could find no peace; therefore he was come now to seek it in this ordinance of God. He spake well, save that his blubbering, &c. interrupted him." (Winthrop, II. 14.)

3 For this Combination," see Hutchinson, I. 102, or Farmer's edition of Belknap, 433. The subscribers say that they find it expedient to confederate, "his most gracious Majesty having settled no order for them, to their knowledge.”

ter at Northam near Barnstable in England.1 ..... Being a man of good parts and wealthy, the people were soon taken with him, and the greater part were forward to cast off Mr. Knollys, their pastor, and to choose him." "He received into the church all that offered themselves, though men notoriously scandalous and ignorant,

1641. May. words.

. so as there soon grew sharp contention between him and Mr. Knollys, to whom the more religious still adhered." 2 The renewed strife between Churchman and Antinomian was not merely a war of "Mr. Knollys and his company excommunicated Mr. Larkham, and he again laid violent hands upon Mr. Knollys." Larkham's party undertook to arrest Underhill, who, by his recent favorable reception at Boston, had been converted back again from his unwonted sympathy with the "gentlemen at the river's mouth"; and, on his part, "he also gathered some of the neighbors to defend himself and to see the peace kept; so they marched forth towards Mr. Larkham's, one carrying a Bible upon a staff for an ensign, and Mr. Knollys with them armed with a pistol." Seeing that they were likely to be worsted, Larkham's party "sent to Mr. Williams, who was Governor of those in the lower part of the river." Williams “ Williams "came up with a company of armed men, and beset Mr. Knollys's house, where Captain Underhill then was, and there they kept a guard upon him night and day." Larkham's friends "called a court, and, Mr. Williams sitting as Judge, they found Captain Underhill and his company guilty of a riot, and set great fines upon them, and ordered him and some others to depart the plantation. The cause of this eager prosecution of Captain Underhill was," if Winthrop judged rightly, "because he had procured a good part of the inhabitants there to 1 From this circumstance Dover took, 2 Winthrop, II. 27. for a little while, the name of Northam.

offer themselves again to the government of the Massachusetts." 1

Underhill and his friends applied to Massachusetts for help, and the magistrates "gave commission to Mr. Bradstreet, Mr. Peter, and Mr. Dalton,2 to go thither and to endeavor to reconcile them; and, if they could not effect that, then to inquire how things stood, and to certify, &c. They went They went accordingly, and finding both sides to be in fault, they brought matters to a peaceable end. Mr. Larkham was released of his excommunication, and Captain Underhill and the rest from their censures." A different result of the investigation

was, that "Mr. Knollys was discovered to be an unclean person." On the whole, Dover was in no hope

ful way.

"3

II. Chap. XIII.)

1 Winthrop, II. 27, 28.-Thomas Wonder-working Providence, Book Lechford, in his "Plain Dealing," &c. (p. 44), gives an account of the same transaction. “Master Larkham," he says, "flying to the magistrates, Master K. [Knollys] and a Captain [Underhill] raised arms and expected help from the Bay, Master K. going before the troop with a Bible upon a pole's top, and he, or some of his party, giving forth that their side were Scots, and the other English. Nine of them were censured to be whipped, but that was spared. Master K. and the Captain, their leaders, were fined a hundred pounds apiece." Knollys's calling his party Scots and the other party English will be understood when it is remembered that the battle of Newburn-upon-Tyne (see above, p. 571) had lately been fought. According to Hubbard (p. 362), Larkham "laid violent hands on Mr. Knollys, taking the hat from his head, pretending it was not paid for; but he was so civil as to send it him again.”

2 The Reverend Timothy Dalton, who was now, or soon after, teacher of the church of Hampton. (Johnson,

3 Winthrop, II. 28 - Underhill returned to Boston the following year; but, partly, perhaps, because he was, after all, in no good credit there, he "found no employment that would maintain him and his family." The Dutch on Hudson's River, and the English at Stamford, having made him proposals, the Boston church advised him to take service with his countrymen at the latter place, and gave him a passage and a liberal outfit accordingly; "but, when he came there, he changed his mind, or at least his course, and went to the Dutch." (Ibid., II. 63.) He signalized himself in wars between them and the Indians (Ibid., 157); and at length died, in 1672, on Long Island, having, in the interval, been for some time a resident in New-Haven Colony, and a Deputy to its General Court from Stamford. (N. H. Col. Rec., 85.) Both Larkham and Knollys, in 1641, went back to England, where they lived many years in good repute.