102 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



cus. The pioneer who made this map gave it no date, but 

 the year 1633 is probably not far from correct, and the 

 chief interest for us is the fact that it is the first known 

 map which bears the name of our town.* 



Having found now the first mention of our name by 

 Captain John Smith, in 1614, and the first map which 

 designates our place, 1633, we may search for the settlers 

 who first came to claim our acres and to gather our harvests. 



They were the hardy and sturdy Englishmen who be- 

 came so disgusted at the unjust treatment long in vogue 

 from the rulers of their mother country, that they were 

 willing to venture across a wide ocean to establish new 

 homes in a virgin forest. 



The throne of England, after the accession of Eliza- 

 beth in the year 1558, was determined to have uniformity 

 in religious affairs ; but many subjects, with the same 

 resoluteness, were determined to have their religious free- 

 dom. The conflict meant death and imprisonment to 

 many subjects and a great uneasiness to the throne. 

 After about seventy-two years of increasing rebellion on 

 one hand and of tyranny by Elizabeth and James I and 

 Charles I upon the other, a relief came to the strained 

 conditions by the project of colonizing the new continent. 

 This safety valve was opened wide about the year 1630. 



The malcontents began to pour out of the troubled 

 realm to the shores of New England. In ten years, be- 

 tween 1630 and 1640, about twenty thousand persons 

 were seized with this colonizing fever and came flocking 

 to the western shore. Some hundreds of these voluntary 

 exiles were humble dwellers in the county of Norfolk, 

 England, in and near the town of Hingham, about 

 seventy-five miles north of London, and thirty-five miles 

 from the University of Cambridge. 



There was one family named Hobart, with four grown- 



*The map is in the British Museum among the Sloane manuscripts. See Mass. 

 Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 1884, p. 211 ; or see Narrative and Critical History of Amer- 

 ica, Vol. II I, p. 381. 



