MASSACHUSETTS AND ITS FISHERIES. 123 



property by a suit at law. Their request was granted; yet when the governor, six other magis- 

 trates, and the jury assembled they were induced to refer the decision of the whole matter to the 

 court of admiralty. Thus terminated an affair which, at the moment, wore a very serious aspect, 

 and threatened to involve the government of Massachusetts in a controversy with their Puritan 

 friends in England. 



"Concluding our account of the year 1044 with the remark that one ship built at Cambridge, 

 and another built at Boston, sailed from the latter place for the Canaries with cargoes offish and 

 pipe-staves, we come, in 1645, to the first voyage undertaken on the distant fishing grounds of 

 Newfoundland. The projectors of the enterprise were merchants of Boston and Charlestowu, 

 who, according to Winthrop, 'sent forth a ship and other vessels' to the Bay of Bulls. The 

 effects of the civil war between Charles and his people, felt, as we have just seen, in the capture 

 of the Bristol ship in Boston, were disastrous even in those remote seas; for when these vessels 

 had nearly completed their fares the ship and most of their fish were seized by a cruiser belonging 

 to the King's party and retained, to the great loss of the merchants. 



" By an act of Massachusetts, in 1C47, every householder was allowed ' free fishing and fowling' 

 in any of the great ponds, bays, coves, and rivers, as far 'as the sea ebbs and flows,' in their 

 respective towns, unless 'the freemen' or the general court 'had otherwise appropriated them.' 

 By a law of the following year fishermen and others were forbidden to continue the practice of 

 cutting fuel and limber, without license, on lauds owned by individuals or towns, though during 

 the fishing season persons who belonged to the colony might still dry their fish and use wood and 

 timber necessary for their business on all such lands by making satisfaction to the proprietors. 

 These laws were followed, in 1052, by another, which provided for the appointment of sworn 'fish 

 viewers' at 'every fishing place' within the jurisdiction, who were required to reject as unmer- 

 chantable all 'sun burnt, salt-burnt, and dry fish that hath been first pickled,' and whose fees on 

 merchantable fish were fixed at one penny the quintal, 'to be paid one-half by the deliverer and 



the other half by the receiver.' 



********* 



"To supply a circulating medium, Massachusetts, as early as 1052, commenced the coinage of 

 the 'pine-tree' shilling pieces, at which Charles the Second was much displeased. The general 

 court, iu 1677, to appease him, ordered a present of 'ten barrels of cranberries, two hogsheads of 

 samp, and three thousand codfish.' During the same year about twenty fishing vessels were 

 captured by the Indians on the coast of Maine. Most of them were owned in Salem, and, having 

 from three to six men each, could have made a successful resistance had they not been taken by 

 surprise, or, as says Hubbard, had they not been 'a dull and heavy-moulded sort of people,' 

 without 'either skill or courage to kill anything but fish.' In fact, some vessels did make a 

 manful defense, lost a number of men killed, and carried home nineteen others wounded. A large 

 vessel was immediately equipped by the merchants of Salem and dispatched to recapture their 

 vessels and punish the captors. The Indians plundered the fishing ketches, abandoned them, 

 and eluded their pursuers. 



"In 1092 Salem lost by removals about a quarter part of its whole population, iu consequence 

 of the trials for witchcraft. The world rings with the enormities of this delusion. It should 

 wonder, rather, that witchcraft in America was so nearly confined to the fishing county of Essex, 

 at a period when all England was peopled with witches and goblins, and when the venerable and 

 devout Sir Matthew Hale doomed two women to be hanged for vexing with fits the child of a herring 

 merchant! The prosperity of Salem was checked from other causes. In 1097 John Higginson 

 wrote his brother Nathaniel, that in 1689 he had obtained a comfortable estate, and was as much 



