[Footnote 2:  The charter is printed in Poore’s Charters and Constitutions, pp. 932-942, and in Preston’s Documents, pp. 36-61.]

Six ships were now fitted out, and in them 406 men, women, and children, with 140 head of cattle, set sail for Massachusetts.  They reached Salem in safety and made it the largest colony in New England.

%38.  Why the Puritans came to New England.%—­It was in 1625 that Charles I. ascended the throne of England.  Under him the quarrel with the Puritans grew worse each year.  He violated his promises, he collected illegal taxes, he quartered troops on the people, he threw those into prison who would not contribute to his forced loans, or pressed them into the army or the navy.  His Archbishop Laud persecuted the Puritans with shameful cruelty.

Little wonder then that in 1629 twelve leading Puritans met in consultation and agreed to head a great migration to the New World, provided the charter and the government of the Massachusetts Bay Company were both removed to New England.  This was agreed to, and in April, 1630, John Winthrop sailed with nearly one thousand Puritans for Salem.  From Salem he moved to Charlestown, and later in the year (1630) to a little three-hilled peninsula, which the English called Tri-mountain or Tremont.  There a town was founded and called Boston.

The departure of Winthrop was the signal, and before the year 1630 ended, seventeen ships, bringing fifteen hundred Puritans, reached Massachusetts.  The newcomers settled Charlestown, Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, Watertown, and Newtown (now Cambridge).  New England was planted.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Read Fiske’s Beginnings of New England, pp. 75-105.  Eggleston’s Beginners of a Nation, pp. 188-219.]

%39.  New Hampshire and Maine.%—­When it became apparent that the Plymouth colony was permanently settled, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whose interest in New England had never lagged, together with John Mason obtained (1622) from the Council for New England a grant of Laconia, as they called the territory between the Merrimac and the Kennebec rivers, and from the Atlantic “to the great river of Canada.”  Seven years later (1629) they divided their property.  Mason, taking the territory between the Merrimac and Piscataqua rivers, called it New Hampshire because he was Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire in England.  Gorges took the region between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec, and called it Maine.  After the death of Mason (1635) his colony was neglected and from 1641 to 1679 was annexed to Massachusetts.  The King separated them in 1679, joined them again in 1688, and finally parted them in 1691, making New Hampshire a royal colony.

Gorges took better care of his part and (in 1639) was given a charter with the title of Lord Proprietor of the Province or County of Maine, which extended, as before, from the Piscataqua to the Kennebec, and backward 120 miles from the ocean.  But after his death the province fell into neglect, and the towns were gradually absorbed by Massachusetts, which, in 1677, bought the claims of the heir of Gorges for L1250 and governed Maine as lord proprietor under the Gorges charter.