110 



He eRgnged in various enterprises, from time to time, by which he 

 acquired weahh. In his endeavors to conquer the French possessions 

 in America he was unwenried, for he saw that, unless they were added 

 to the British crown, there could be no peace upon the fishing gi'ounds. 

 He was at last knighted, and, under the second charter of Massachusetts, 

 was appointed the first governor. When the Indians, who knew him 

 in his youth, listened to the tale of his successes and honors, they were 

 amazed, for, says an old writer, "they had fished and hunted with 

 him many a weary day." He died in 169-5, without children. 



Sir William Pepperell, the commander of the memorable expedition 

 against Louisbourg, was the son of a fisherman of the Isles of Shoals. 

 As a merchant at Kittery, the oldest incorporated town in Maine, where 

 he was born, where he lived and died, and where strangers are still 

 shown his large mansion-house and his tomb, he Was personally con- 

 cerned in the tisheiies. He acquired great wealth. The dignity of a 

 baronet of Great Britain, an honor never before nor since conferred on 

 a native of New England, was bestowed in reward of his military ser- 

 vices; and not long previous to his death, he was created a lieutenant 

 general. He deceased in 1759. His grandson, who inherited liis title and 

 a large part of his estate, was a loyalist in the Revolution; and losing 

 his patrimony under the confiscation act, was a recipient of the bounty 

 of the British crown. The baronetcy is now extinct; and such are the 

 vicissitudes of human condition, that members of the Pepperell family 

 have been literally saved from becoming inmates of an almshouse by 

 individual charities. 



NEW HAJfPSHIEE. 



From 1623 to the Revolutionary Controtxrsy. 



To include the early inhabitants of New Hampshire with Puritans 

 mid among refugees from reUgious persecution, as some do, is to degrade 

 to mere fable many of the best authenticated facts in history. The 

 sole purpose of the first and of the subsequent proprietors was to 

 acquire wealth by fishing and trading. The original patentees were 

 Sir Ferdinando Gorges, John Mason, and several merchants of London, 

 Bristol, Plymouth, Dorchester, and other places in England, who pur- 

 chased the countr}^ between the Merrimack and the Kennebec,* and 

 back to the great lakes and the St. Lawrence, and styled themselves 

 the " Company of Laconia." In 1623 they sent over David Thom|> 

 son, Edward and William Hilton, fishmongers in London, with a num- 

 ber of other persons, in two divisions, furnished with ample tools, im- 

 plements, and provisions, to commence a fisheiy and plant a colony. 

 One division landed on the south shore of the Piscataqua, at its mouth, 

 where;, immediately^ to provide salt to cure fish, they built salt works, 



* In a paper wliich Hutcliiuson preserves m his " Collection," and which he ascribes to the 

 commissioners ot'Chark's II, or to some person erapl-ojed by them, it is said that "?.Ir. Mason 

 had a pattent for some land about Cape Ann before the Massachusetts had their first pattent; 

 whereupon Captain Mason and Mr. Cradock, who was the first governor of the Massachusetts, 

 ajui lived in London, agreed that the Massachusetts should have that laud which was graunted 

 to Captain Mason about Cape Ann, and Captiiin ]\Iason should have that land wliich was 

 Ueyoad Meiima« river aiid grauuled to the Massachusetts," &c>, &c. 



