(347) 
Governor Wentworth had in the meantime granted 130 
townships ; a few before the final submission in 1754, and the 
rest from 1761 to 1764, after the close of the French war in 
1760, and was censured by the Board of Trade for making these 
grants pendente lite.* Some of them in 1763 were hawked 
about the streets of New York for sale, and the district came 
to be known as the ‘‘ New Hampshire grants.” This coming 
to the notice of Lieutenant-Governor Colden, who was then 
acting Governor, he took up the matter with his accustomed 
vigor, wrote repeatedly in 1763 and 1764 to the Lords of 
Trade, who had the matter in charge, urging a speedy de- 
cision, and the impolicy of extending the power and influ- 
ence of the New England governments, ‘‘all formed on 
Republican principles in opposition to those of the British 
Constitution,” and of diminishing New York, formed after the 
English model. The Ministry was already urging taxation 
of the colonies. The Stamp Act soon followed. Governor 
Colden was informed that the reasons he suggested ‘for 
making the Connecticut river the boundary, were adopted”; 
Zz. €.,a8 a new boundary.t 
The order of 1764 was thus clearlyintended and understood 
by the Crown to relate to the future only. It cut off Gov. 
Wentworth’s power to make further grants, but did not deny 
his previous authority, nor avoid his prior grants. Explained 
as annexing the district to New York, it afirmed and validated 
h t. Gov. Colden and the New York officials, on the con- 
trary, assumed that Gov. Wentworth’s grants were invalidated, 
and that the former grantees might be required to take out new 
surveys and new patents from New York, paying again for 
fees and quit rents upon the New York scale (more than 
double those of New Hampshire) or be disregarded and their 
lands patented to others. Lt. Gov. Colden accordingly, at 
once began issuing patents for townships in the ‘‘ New 
8: 12, 193, 285, 295, 318; H. Hall’s Vt., . a 99, 479: Thompson’s Vt., 
Part II., 19-20; Slade’s State Papers, XV.-XX. ; post, pp. 356-358, note. 
*N. H.St ate Papers, 10: 204; Slade, 13; Colonial Doc., 8: 331. 
+N. Y¥. Hist. Soc. Pub. 1876, 236, a 304, 316; Colonial Doc., 7: 562, 
642; ibid., 4 : 625; Jones, Hist. N. Y., 1: 48, 543; Bancroft, 5 : 150, 225-247. 
