he had purchased of another original grantee.  It could not be swung round to the south without jamming up the lands of Felton and others, or pushing them over the grants, made to Robert Cole—­under which Downing had purchased—­and to Thomas Read.  All these parties were combined to force it south-eastwardly over the grounds of Endicott.  Nathaniel Putnam was his most fatal antagonist.  He was a man of remarkable energy, of consummate adroitness, and untiring resources in such a transaction; and he so managed to press in the bounds of the Bishop farm, at the north-east, as to gain a valuable strip for himself.  With this strong man against him, acting in combination with the rich and influential James Allen, minister of the great metropolitan First Church, and licenser of the press, who brought the whole power of his clerical and social connections in Boston and throughout the colony to bear upon the General Court, Zerubabel Endicott had no chance for justice, and no redress for wrong.  In vain he invoked the memory of his father, or of Winthrop, the grandfather of his wife.  His father and both the Winthrops had long before left the scene:  a new generation had risen, and there was none to help him.

One would have supposed, that the General Court, which had granted the Orchard Farm to Governor Endicott, would have felt bound, in self-respect and in honor, to have protected it against any overlapping grants subsequently made by an inferior authority.  Under the circumstances of the case, it was its duty to have held the Orchard Farm intact, and made it up to the satisfaction of Allen and Nurse by a grant elsewhere, or an equitable compensation in money.  It owed so much to the son of Endicott and the grand-daughter of Winthrop, the first noble Fathers of the colony.  Perhaps the court found its justification in the phraseology of the deed of conveyance of the Bishop farm from Governor Endicott to his son John.  After reciting or referring to the original town grant to Bishop, and the deeds from Bishop to Chickering, and from Chickering to himself, the Governor conveys to his son John all the houses, &c., and every part and parcel of the land “to the utmost extent thereof, according as is expressed or included in either of the forecited deeds, or town grant.”  It was maintained, and justly, by Allen, that he held all that was conveyed to John Endicott, Jr.  But the Court had no right to encroach upon the Orchard Farm, which had been granted to the Governor by them prior to all deeds and to the town grant to Bishop.

Never did that deep and sagacious observation on the mysteries of human nature, “Men’s judgments are a parcel of their fortunes,” receive a more striking or melancholy illustration than in the case of Zerubabel Endicott.  With his falling fortunes, his judgment and discretion fell also; his mind, maddened by a sense of wrong, seemed bent upon exposing itself to new wrongs.  Having been broken down by lawsuits, that had wasted his estate, he seemed to have acquired