Radio Script #1249

Little Talks on Common Things
October 12, 1980

New light on early settlement of Maine was discovered recently in the long concealed letters written in the 1640s by an early agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. In 1639 Gorges had obtained a royal Charter giving him jurisdiction of New England between the Piscataqua river at Kittery and the Kennebec, extending inland 150 miles and including all islands within five miles of the coast. Sir Ferdinando never saw his Maine lands, but until Massachusetts purchased them from his heirs in 1678 they were governed by agents of his appointment.

The first of those agents was a Thomas Gorges in Boston on June 12, 1640, and soon made his way to what was called Agamenticus near the Piscataqua. It was he who wrote those letters. Long in the possession of the Millock family of Exeter, England, into which Thomas Gorges had married, they came into the possession of the City Library of Exeter in 1948, and have since been available to scholars. Their copying proved a tremendous job because they were in such poor condition torn, blotted and stained, whole sections as well as many individual words were undecipherable. At last, two years ago, what could be transcribed were put into print by Robert Moody of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Let us now see what those letters tell us about Gorges’ Province of Maine.

At once young Gorges encountered difficulty which continued long after he returned to England in 1643. Instead of appointing a governor for his chartered grant, Sir Ferdinando appointed a number of agents for different parts of it. Thus young Thomas shared jurisdiction with Richard Vines at Saco, Henry Jocelyn at Black Point, John Winter at Cape Elizabeth, and Thomas Cheaver at Casco Bay.

A few extracts from the letters reveal these difficulties. In October 1640 Thomas Gorges wrote to John Winter: “The court of this province denies your claim. All was done according to law when a jury denied your claim. You even threatened the life of my agent. I value the duty I owe to my sovereign and to the Lord Proprietor Sir Ferdinando, and I shall see that the law is full executed.”

In July 1641, Thomas wrote to Sir Ferdinando, “Court has just closed. The chief case was Cleves vs. Winter. The jury ordered Winter’s arrest for slander. Then the case was put to arbitration. The arbitrators awarded Cleves $60, which satisfied him. After the jury found for Cleves, Winter appealed to you to personally hear the case. We could not agree to that for it would make us mere slaves with no control over local affairs. But we told Winter he can put in a bill of particulars which our court will consider. Winter is to retain the land at Spurwink, while Cleves gets the land at Casco Bay.

In the fall of 1641 Chas. Trelawney, who also held grant to Casco Bay land, complained that Cleves had trespassed on his property. When the court held Cleves innocent, Thomas Gorges wrote to Trelawney: “I have seen both rivers. Cleves has the bigger, but the other comes farther inland. You complain because I sent a second man to execute the court order. I did so because the man I first sent was threatened to have his throat cut by your man. When he swore to the truth of the threat, I could only summon a posse coml.tatu~ The law must be obeyed.”

What was life like in those first tiny settlements from the Piscataqua River to Casco Bay?

On July 19, 1640, Thomas Gorges wrote to his father in England:
“I have now been three weeks in Agamenticus. I found Sir’Ferdinando’s house here very small with only three rooms. The largest I have taken for my bedroom and study. It has no glass in the windows. My diet is beef with foul and fish. I have only two cows and a calf – no oxen. There are -three pigs, and by winter I hope to have bacon. I am getting some domestic poultry; then I shall have eggs. Sir Ferdinando’s mills are in disrepair, but will soon be producing lumber and grain. There is not a fence in the place and I must build one to keep the cattle I shall get. The tenants are supposed each to pay 10 shillings a year but only a few have paid.”

Thomas Gorges was constantly urging British friends to join him in America. To Joseph Goodwin in London he wrote: “The country here is plentiful yielding all sorts of English grains and fruits. The rivers are well stocked with fish; and the woods are treed with cedar, pine and oak.”

In a September letter to Sir Ferdinando, Thomas said: “Your grounds have been disturbed by wolves and bears, and even by thieving men. I have received from you one crock and one kettle. Our hops garden is ruined, giving us no early hope of brewing beer. Your field is unfenced, your mills in disrepair. The wolves are our great enemies. They get many sheep, goats and swine. We have put a bounty of two pence a head on every wolf killed. Money is very scarce, corn is used formally for payment.”

In the midst of all his complaints, Thomas always tried to see what was good in the new land. In July 1641, he wrote to his father: “My affections are now knit to this country, the healthiness of its air, its fertility, and the society of God’s people. Provisions are plentiful, but we need warm clothing for winter. Fish are so plentiful that they are used for planting instead of dung, of which we have little. While the summers are hot, a cool southerly wind makes them comfortable. The winters are cold, but firewood ready for cutting is right in everyone’s door. The woods are full of animals that yield both meat and valuable furs. A good fowler can get quantities of wild turkeys and other game birds. In summer we see almost daily huge flocks of pigeons. With a net we can take a dozen in a few minutes. Our wild fruits are strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, grapes, plums and cherries.”

Only 22 when he came to America, Thomas Gorges remained unmarried until after his return to England. In September 1641, he wrote to Sir Ferdinando: “How I shall hold out for want of a woman I know not. Men do not milk or make butter and cheese, and women for hire are hard to find here. I have neither money nor cloth. We are very poor here. We have enough to eat but please send us some clothes.”

Months later, in May 1642, Thomas wrote to the Proprietor: “This is very good land, but the long winters are hard. We have few staples, few servants, and seldom see a ship to take the few things we have to sell. I now have a woman and her daughter tending my house and dairy. I give them $7 a year and all they can eat and drink. Servants are so scarce that they undo us. Their demands for wages are outrageous. As for slaves from Africa, even if their bodies will endure our cold winters. I question the lawful taking of them from their native land.”

In many letters Thomas Gorges expressed concern about religion in New England. Unlike Sir Ferdinando. he was not an unrelenting adherent of the Church of England. On the other hand he was not an outright separatist. He liked many of the doctrines and practices of the Separatist orthodox Church of Massachusetts Bay, but he had no use for its bigoted persecution of other beliefs.

Early in his tenure he brought before the court an erring minister. whom the jury convicted of adultery and other misbehavior and exiled him from the Province. But in September 1642, Thomas showed one of his own disciplinary convictions in a letter to William Vassal of Boston, one of the original incorporators of Massachusetts Bay and ancestor of the man for whom Vassalboro, Maine is named. Vassal had the reputation for being a religious liberal. While Gorges’ own liberalism extended to granting freedom of belief to all persons and their control by no state church, he did believe in firm church discipline. Once a man accepted membership in any church, he was bound to obey the rules of that church. So Gorges told Vassal that he found Peter Hulls’ preaching against certain punishments unacceptable; that when a church decreed fixed penalties or a court so decreed them, they must be carried out. Gorges was constantly aware of the differences, both religious and political between the separatist government of Massachusetts Bay and the loyal Church of England settlement in Sir Ferdinando’s province, but during his brief three-year tenure the young Gorges did all he could to reconcile those differences.

Thomas Gorges’ correspondence with his proprietor and benefactor, Sir Ferdinando, tells us something about the way government was developing in the new world. While the Gorges administration held a grant directly from the King, independent of either Massachusetts Bay or Plymouth, they wanted to get along peacefully with the stronger government at Boston, so they made many concessions. On Massachusetts’ claims to any land east of the Piscataqua, however, the Gorges government refused to budge. When a man named Wheelwright in Boston wanted to settle 30 families on land to be granted him by the Gorges proprietors, Thomas Gorges told him that the land would be under Gorges, but Massachusetts jurisdiction. and that the Province followed in civil action as near as possible, the laws of England. He added: “In ecclesiastical matters, we force no man to use the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England, but allow liberty of conscience and do not require the church covenant of the Bay.”

Yet Thomas Gorges was enough of an Episcopalian to make plans for his brother Robin. In October 1640, Thomas wrote to his father in England: “If our university here had flourished. I would want Robin to come here and attend it; but alas, it has not. So I ask that you put him in charge of Mr. Bernard, who will fit him for Oxford. where Robin can prepare for the ministerial profession. Then he can come to New England, where he can have a good pastorate. If I had 60 brothers prepared as clergymen, I could place them all in comfortable charges in our Province.”

Robin Gorges did not come to New England, but his brother Robert did. In September 1641 Thomas wrote to Sir Ferdinando: “My younger brother Robert wants to come here. He might easily manage your affairs when I return to England. If you secure trading vessels, he could manage them well. He could draw up all the leases for your tenants.”

On Dec. 5, 1641, Thomas wrote to the proprietor that his orders concerning governing the Province were being carried out. Thomas wrote: “The County of Devon will extend from the Piscataqua River to the Ogunquit, a distance of five leagues. The County of Georgeana will lie between the Ogunquit River and Cape Porpoise. The County of Somerset will be from Cape Porpoise to Cape Elizabeth; and the County of Sciscillie from Cape Elizabeth to the Kennebec River. The name of the fourth County was later changed to Sagadahoc. and when Massachusetts obtained title to all the Gorges lands in 1678, the old county lines no longer held.

From 1641 to 1678, court was held at various times in Agamenticus (York), Saco, Falmouth. and at least once in Kittery. That Thomas Gorges was a competent leader was shown by his ability to get along with the elected commissioners of each county. More than once when conflict arose between two of the county courts, he succeeded in settling the case by arbitration.

I have already mentioned Gorges’ frequent references to wolves. Indeed his letters are filled with accounts of depredations committed by those creatures. As late as 1642, he told Sir Ferdinando that they would probably have to increase the bounty paid for wolves’ heads because Massachusetts Bay was paying not only settlers but also Indians 4 pence a head for those slaughtered animals.

As for the clothing, for which letter after letter expressed a need, he wrote in June 1642: “We have planted several fields of flax and hope soon to make our own linen. But for woolen goods we must depend a little cotton from the West Indies.”

Thomas SaiN’a;-futlire for the mast trade, but felt it would be better around Casco Bay, in the Cleves grant, than in either the Saco or the York areas. That proved to be true, for Portland became the leading port for the loading of masts for His Majesty’s ships.

Thomas had no use for the Indians. He felt it was useless to try to Christianize them. In early 1642 he told Sir Ferdinando of a threatened uprising of all tribes from Cape Cod to the Kennebec. Then in June he wrote: “The Indians are now tractable. The Lord sent his avenging angel and swept many of them away. (That refers to the big Indian epidemic of 1642.) It is not safe to trust them. Everywhere they have been equally disastrous to the English, French and Spanish. There is no hope of bringing them to a knowledge of God.”

After three years in charge of Sir Ferdinando’s Maine lands, Thomas Gorges decided to return to England. His last letter from Maine was written to Sir Ferdinando on July 7, 1643. In it he said, “I have engaged passage on the Ship Mary Ann of Dartmouth. About four days hence we leave here, going to the Madeiras, then to Malaga in Spain. It seems a roundabout way to England, but it will get me there earlier than if I wait for some British ship, as we do not know when any will call here.”

So after three years in Maine, Thomas Gorges returned to his native England. His place was taken by his brother Robert, as he himself had carefully planned.

And that is an account of some of the happenings in Ferdinando Gorges’ Province of Maine in its early years between 1640 and 1643. And with that we say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1980