The Bishop farm was required, by the terms of the grant, to be one hundred and sixteen rods wide at its eastern end.  But there was no room for it.  The requisite width could not be got without encroaching upon either Putnam or Endicott, or both.  As Endicott stood upon an earlier title than that of Bishop, and from a higher authority, and Putnam upon a later title from an inferior authority, the court of trials might have disposed of the matter, at the opening, on that ground, and Putnam been left to suffer the encroachment.  But it did not so decide; and the case went on.  The struggle was between Endicott to push it north, and thereby save his Orchard Farm, and the land between it and the Bishop grant, given by the town to his father, called the Governor’s Plain, and Nathaniel Putnam to push it south, and thereby save the land he had received from his wife’s father, Richard Hutchinson, who had purchased from Stileman.  Allen stood on the defensive against both of them.  The Nurses had nothing to do but to attend to their own business, carrying on their farming operations up to the limits of their deed, looking to Allen for redress, if, in the end, the dimensions of their estate should be curtailed.  But, being the occupants, and, until finally ousted, the owners of the land, if there was any intrusion to be repelled, or violence to be met, or fighting to be done, they were the ones to do it.  They were equal to the situation.

After various trials in the courts of law in all possible shapes, the whole subject was carried up to the General Court, where it was decided, in conformity with the report of a special commission in May, 1679, substantially in favor of Putnam and Allen.  Endicott petitioned for a new hearing.  Another commission was appointed; and their report was accepted in May, 1682.  It was more unfavorable to Endicott than the previous one.  He protested against the judgment of the court in earnest but respectful language, and petitioned for still another hearing.  They again complied with his request, and appointed a day for once more examining the case; but, when the day came, Nov. 24, 1683, he was sick in bed, and the case was settled irrevocably against him.

The map gives the lines of the Bishop farm as finally settled by the General Court.  It will be noticed, that it is laid directly across the Governor’s Plain, and runs far into the Orchard Farm “up to the rocks near Endicott’s dwelling-house,” or, as it is otherwise stated, “within a few rods of Guppy’s ditch, near to” the said house.  It may be said to have been a necessity, as the original three hundred acres of the grant to Townsend Bishop had to be made up.  It could not go north; for Houlton and Ingersol stood upon the Weston grant, and Hutchinson and Nathaniel Putnam stood upon Stileman’s grants, to push it back.  It could not go west or south-west, for there Swinnerton stood to fend off upon his grants; and there, too, was Nathaniel Putnam, upon his own grant, and lands