43 



vessel and the outfit was increased in the same proportion. I may add 

 that it is of interest to learn from this remark of Smith, and fi'om others 

 that occur in his pamphlets, that the practice of fitting out vessels " on 

 shares " — to use a term well known among practical men, still so 

 common — was introduced more than two centuries a^o. 



Abuses far greater than those which had required the correcting 

 hand of Whitbourne at Newfoundland soon demanded attention. Sir 

 Ferdinando Gorges and the quaint Hubbard both declare that the 

 fishermen and others taught the Indians " drunkenness, wickedness, 

 and lewdness;" that they "abused the Indian women openly," and 

 were guilty of "other beastly demeanors," to the "overthrow of our 

 trade and the dishonor of the government." To put an end to these 

 disorders, and to accomplish other purposes, Sir Ferdinando Gorges's 

 son Robert was commissioned, in 1G23, to come to New England as 

 ueutenant general over all the country known by that name. Francis 

 West, bearing the commission of admiral of the seas, with power to 

 restrain such ships as came either to fish or trade on the coast withont 

 license, arrived the same year. Neither were officers of the crown, 

 but the agents of a private corporation. 



King James had granted, three years previously, to forty noblemen, 

 knights, and gentlemen, the vast domain embraced between the 40th 

 and 48th degrees of north latitude, and extending from ocean to 

 ocean. This company, known in popular language as the " Council of 

 Plymouth," claimed not only the territory within their patent, but the 

 seas. Assuming that the fishing-grounds from Acadia to the Delaware 

 were no longer free to British subjects, they asserted exclusive property 

 in and control over them, and were sustained in their pretensions by 

 the Kins:. 



The controversy which followed the attempt of the council to main- 

 tain this monstrous claim was fierce and angry in the extreme. The 

 limits of this report will allow but a brief account of it. It commenced 

 in 1621, two years before the voyage of West, and was continued for 

 several years. 



Sir Ferdinando Gorges's narrative of the troubles of the council from 

 this source and others is preserved in the Collections of the Massachu- 

 setts Historical Society, and contains many interesting statements. He 

 had been an officer in Queen Elizabeth's navy, and intimately connected 

 with Mason, who became the gi^antee of New Hampshire, and, with Sir 

 Walter Raleigh, the father of American colonization, and was as deter- 

 mined as either of them to leave his name in our annals. He was an 

 active, indeed the principal, member of the council, and after its disso- 

 lution, acquired Maine in his own individual right. 



The council demanded that every fishing vessel should pay into their 

 treasury a sum equal to about eighty-three cents the ton, which, the 

 small size of the vessels of the period considered, amounted to a tribute 

 probably of more than a huncbed dollars from each English ship that 

 should come upon our coast. They had made no settlements upon the 

 land, and the tonnage money to be exacted of the fishermen constituted 

 the only present source of revenue fi'om their possessions. 



The spirit of the English people was roused. The Dutch herring- 

 fishery was regarded as the " right arm of Holland," and the imagina- 



