MISCELLANEOUS. 1169 



vailed, the merchants who had purchased the island of Monhegan, 

 and had provided there ample accommodations for the prosecution 

 of their adventures, sold their property and retired from the business. 



Singular to remark, too, that on the immediate coast of New Eng- 

 land and for ships owned or entirely controlled by English mer- 

 chants the right of "free fishing," so earnestly contended for, was of 

 little real value. Accounts of such ships terminate almost at the very 

 moment that the right was established, in the manner related.* In 

 another part of this report, we shall indeed find that single vessels 

 continued to arrive at, and depart from, particular fishing stations; 

 but these instances do not change the general truth, for most of them 

 were connected with establishments occupied by persons who came 

 to settle and remain in the country. We may conjecture that these 

 merchants withdrew, because, once interrupted, they would not 

 adventure again; or because they were satisfied that, in the long run, 

 the Newfoundland fishery would prove the safest and most profitable; 

 or because some of them became interested with their countrymen, 

 who, meantime, had founded the colonies of Plymouth, New Hamp- 

 shire, and Maine, who had set up fishing-stages at Cape Ann, and were 

 about to undertake the colonization of Massachusetts on an exten- 

 sive plan. 



The disasters, at most, were limited and partial. The benefits 

 were general, and of vast consequence. Had the council succeeded 

 in their measures the whole course of affairs would have been arrested, 

 and the settlement of the country postponed indefinitely. Before 

 the dissolution of the corporation, eight patents of soil and fisheries 

 were granted in Maine ; and the long, expensive, and vexatious quar- 

 rels which arose there between rival patentees, and the claimants 

 under them, prove conclusively that, had the seas and territory of all 

 New England been lotted and parcelled out in the same way, our his- 

 tory, for an entire century, would have contained little else than 

 accounts of strifes, commotions, and forcible possessions and ejec- 

 tions. 



Several of the patents issued by the council previous to 1626 convey, 

 either by implication or in express terms, to the patentees, the exclu- 

 sive right of fishing within their domains ; and in their eighth and last, 

 to Aldworth and Elbridge, two merchants of Bristol, England, dated 

 in 1631, and known in Maine as the "Pemaquid patent," this pro- 



* Governor Bradford, in a letter to the "Council of New England," dated at Plymouth, 

 June 15, 1627, complains that the English fishermen on the coast "began to leave fish- 

 ing and to fall wholly to trading, to the great detriment of " the settlers there, and the 

 "state of England." In the year following, complaint was made to the council against 

 Thomas Morton, who "had been often admonished not to trade or truck with the 

 Indians," and against "the fishing ships, who made it too ordinary a practice" to do 

 the same thing, and over whom the people of Plymouth had no control. 



In a communication to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the same year, (1628,) it is said that 

 Englishmen, under "pretence of fishing," sold the natives all manner of arms; that 

 "from the greedy covetousness of the fishermen, and their evil example, the like had 

 began to grow amongst some, who pretend themselves to be planters, though indeed 

 they intend nothing less but to take opportunity of the time, and provide themselves 

 and begone, and leave others to quench the fire which they have kindled," &c., &c. 



The evil seems to have been alarming, since it is further said, that unless the colo- 

 nists were protected against those misdeeds, they must "quit the country." Thoassist- 

 ance of Gorges, to bring Morton "to answer those whom it may concern," and "like- 

 wise that such fishermen may be called to account," is earnestly entreated. 



92909 S. Doc. ^70, 61-3, vol 3 35 



