1621-32 The French to the DEALINGS WITH THE FRENCH. 303 government of De Razilly. The administration of them was entrusted to two lieutenant-governors, D'Aulney and De la Tour. In addition to his official settlements rights De la Tour had a somewhat curious pronorth. prietary claim. In 1621 the court favourite, Sir William Alexander, not yet raised to the earldom of Stirling, had obtained from James I. a grant of the province of Acadia, or, as the new proprietor called it, Nova Scotia.2 This grant was confirmed by Charles I. in 1625.3 In 1630 Alexander by a private agreement made over his territorial rights to De la Tour.* Two years later the treaty of St. Germains brought the grant under the jurisdiction of the French crown." with Both D'Aulney and De la Tour had already embroiled themselves with their English neighbours. The enterHostilities prising settlers of Plymouth had as we have Plymouth. seen established factories for the fur trade to the north of the Kennebec. In 1631 a French privateer, guided by one whom Bradford calls a false Scot,' touched at Penobscot, professing to refit. Many French compliments they used and congees they made.' The manager of the factory was absent, and it was left in the charge of three or four servants. The Frenchmen were received into the house. Then they began to examine and admire the guns which were hung upon the walls. The unwary English were disarmed, seized, and stripped of their goods; the French then sailed away, bidding their victims tell their master when he came that some of the Isle of Rhé gentlemen had been there.6 1 Charlevoix, Histoire de la Nouvelle France, ed. 1744, vol. i. p. 410. 2 Alexander's original grant is given in Hazard (vol. i. pp. 134–145). 3 Colonial Papers, 1627, May 3. 4 The deed of transfer is in Hazard, vol. i. PP. 307-9. 5 Strictly speaking the cession of Canada and Nova Scotia was the sub ject of a special treaty (Rymer (ed. 1743), vol. viii. pt. 3, p. 228). 6 • The whole of this incident is told by Bradford (p. 189); cf. Winthrop, vol. i. p. 79. Not long after another trading house which some of the Plymouth settlers had established at Machias was attacked by De la Tour, on the ground that it was an encroachment on French soil. Two of the occupants were killed, and all the goods carried off.1 The Plymouth traders, undeterred by these failures, again set up a factory at Penobscot. It was now attacked, not by a privateer, but in a more formal and authoritative fashion.2 In 1635 D'Aulney was commissioned by Razilly to displace all English settlers north of Pemaquid. Having captured a shallop with some men from Penobscot in it, D'Aulney made his prisoners pilot him into the harbour. He then took possession of the house and goods. The buildings he declared to be forfeited, since they were placed on the territory of others. For the goods he promised to pay a reasonable price if the English would send for it. On hearing the news the men of Plymouth fitted out an expedition to obtain redress. It consisted of the one ship which seems then to have formed the navy of the colony, and another which they hired for seven hundred pounds of beaver, worth then about two hundred pounds sterling, the payment to be conditional on success. The incompetency of her captain, Girling, led to the failure of the expedition. Bradford describes the attack with that graphic simplicity of which he was a master. Girling had not patience to bring his ship where she might do execution, but began to shoot at distance like a madman, and did them no hurt at all.' At last, pressed by the remonstrances of his allies, he 'saw his own folly, and bestowed a few shot to good 1 The exact date of this affair is uncertain. Winthrop (vol. i.p. 117. says that the news came to Boston in November 1633. Bradford tells of it under the year 1631. But he seems to mention it as the continuation of certain events which happened in that year. 2 The capture of the factory by D'Aulney and the attempt to recover it are very fully told by Bradford (pp. 207-9) and Winthrop (vol. i. pp. 166, 168). H 1635 PLYMOUTH AND MASSACHUSETTS NEGOTIATE. 305 purpose. But now, when he was in a way to do some good, his powder was gone.' After this failure the government of Plymouth made an application for help to Massachusetts. The Court at Boston seemed at first favourable, and asked them to send representatives to treat about the matter. Accordingly they sent Prence, one of the chief colonists, and Standish, who had been in command of the unsuccessful expedition. The Massachusetts government was willing to give help, but on condition of being reimbursed for all outlay. Considering that the occasion was wholly due to a commercial venture made by Plymouth, and that the latter colony alone would benefit by the expedition, such a stipulation was not unfair. The representatives of Plymouth, however, demurred to this condition, and the business fell through. Bradford adds, with not unjust resentment, that certain merchants from Massachusetts soon after traded with the enemy, and supplied them with arms and ammunition, and that the independent settlers on the coast of Maine kept up a good understanding with their French neighbours, and gave them intelligence as to the doings. of the English.1 Materials for a confederation Such were the varied motives which urged the New England colonists to seek some form of federal union. There could be no doubt as to their fitness for such an experiment. The main principles which underlay the social and political life of each colony were identical. Each was formed of much the same material, each had been established from the same motives and with the same hopes, each started with the same political training and had carried on that training in the same direction. The fact that Massachusetts limited the rights of citizenship to church 1 Bradford, p. 210. This complaint is confirmed by Winthrop (vol. ii. p. 84). members was no serious ground of difference. We may be sure that the men of Plymouth and Connecticut disregarded that precaution because it seemed either needless or inexpedient, not because they were in the abstract opposed to it. If the Puritanism of Massachusetts was narrower and more tyrannical than that of Plymouth, it was mainly because the larger population and greater activity of the younger colony had given more scope for diversity of opinion. The real hindrance to union was the inequality which could not fail to exist between the partners. In population, in wealth, in learning, in the security of her possessions, in the friendship of those who were now rising into power in England, Massachusetts towered over the other colonies. The actual number of the population in the various colonies may be a matter of doubt. But their relative resources are made certain by the first levy under the Articles of Confederation. That levy was proportioned to the inhabitants of each colony fit to bear arms. Massachusetts contributed a hundred and fifty men, Plymouth thirty, the other two confederates twenty-five each. In other words, the military resources of Massachusetts were nearly double those of the other three colonies combined. Her superiority in other respects does not admit of such definite statistical proof, but it is written on every page of New England history. sal of con There was so little of personal and individual influence in New England politics that there is nothing to Firstpropo- show in whose mind the scheme for confederafederation. tion first took definite shape. The sojourn of the Plymouth settlers in Holland, and the interest which all New Englanders must have felt in the affairs of that country, would no doubt have turned their thoughts to the subject. The unsatisfactory nature of the combined operations against the Pequods in all 1637-8 MASSACHUSETTS PROPOSES A FEDERATION. 307 likelihood gave the first impulse. In almost the same passage in which Winthrop describes the final overthrow and dispersion of the enemy, he tells us that, as some of the magistrates and ministers of Connecticut were at Boston, a conference, seemingly unpremeditated, was held to discuss a scheme for confederation. Notice of this was given to the government of Plymouth, but too late for them to take any part in the deliberations.1 Scheme by Massa The next we hear is that in 1638 a scheme of union was proposed by Massachusetts and rejected by Connecticut. The question on which they differed proposed was whether the vote of a majority of Federal chusetts. Commissioners should have binding power on the whole Confederation. This was the scheme proposed on behalf of Massachusetts. The representatives of Connecticut demurred to this. They proposed that the judgment of the Commissioners should be final only when it was unanimous, and that in any case of difference the matter should be referred back to the legislature of the various colonies. Such a scheme would have deprived the Confederation of all promptitude of action, and destroyed its efficiency for those purposes of defence for which it was mainly needed. It is remarkable that in the actual working of the federal system Massachusetts was always the one colony which held fast to the right of independent action against the united wishes of her confederates. Delibera Of the part which Newhaven and Plymouth bore in these deliberations we hear nothing. When a hundred and fifty years later the principle of fedetions as to ration won its great triumph in the union of the thirteen colonies, we know every stage in the process, every dispute and difficulty as it arose, every argument by which opposition was sustained and confedera tion. 1 Winthrop, vol. i. p. 237. 2 Ib. p. 284. |