Attempts to Form Chartered Companies. 19 



ernor and Council, and for the Assembly by the speaker, 

 Nehemiah Jewell.^ The memorialists said: 



"Inasmuch as we have been informed by Sir Henry Ashurst^ that the 

 Attorney General, in his report, certified the inconsistencies of the peti- 

 tioners' grant with the royal charter granted to the several provinces 

 in New England; also how prejudicial the privileges and powers 

 prayed for might be to their Majesties interests with respect to the 

 government of that country, and other ways; and that the petitioners 

 have waived and do not insist on most of their ten heads, yet pray to be 

 incorporated with such capacities and liberties as is set forth in the 

 said report, we shall only further offer to your Lordships, that all their 

 Majesties subjects, singly or in company, have always had full liberty 

 in trading, fishing, building ships, working, raising and gaining such 

 commodities as they think meet; and their ships, when distressed, have 

 been relieved, supplied, etc., and are under no restraint other than the 

 Acts of Parliament for trade and navigation. We humbly conceive *** 

 that it is requisite that the petitioners be, with respect of trade, in equal 

 conditions and on the same level with other subjects; otherwise, with 

 so great a stock as is proposed, the trade of the country will soon be 

 engrossed and the commodities thereby advanced, to the utter ruin 

 of the first planters, who, that they might free themselves from the yoke 

 of arbitrary power then prevailing, and to augment the dominion of the 

 crown of England, at their own cost transported themselves into this 

 wilderness, subdued, planted, governed and with their lives and estate 

 defended, and are still with their great impoverishment defending, 

 against their Majesties cruell and treacherous enemies; *** and should 

 the petitioners be incorporated, they can make no settlement to accom- 

 plish their ends, without acquiring to themselves considerable tracks 

 of land. Many of the settlers have not been careful to secure titles to 

 their lands. Now if the petitioners can make but a pretense of title, 

 who will be so hardy, or can possibly be able to wage law and to cope 

 with so opulent a corporation? Therefore, we humbly depend on 

 their Majesties Grace and Favour that these plantations, already labor- 

 ing under heavy persecutions, may not by such grants be discouraged 

 and necessitated to conflict with the manifold inconveniences conse- 

 quent thereof." 



At the same time, Sir Henry Ashurst received instructions 

 from Governor Phips to oppose the granting- of the patent. 



^The memorial is dated June 15, 1694. B. T. New Eng.. A: 7: New 

 Eng., Entry Bk. A, fol. 14. 



^Ashurst must have deliberately misrepresented the attorney's 

 export. 



