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no previous compact to concede to
New Hampshire any
charter whatever.
The right to the soil, which
Samuel Allen, of
London, had purchased of
Mason, was recognized as valid; and
Allen himself received the royal commission to govern a people whose territory, including the farms they had redeemed from the wilderness, he claimed as his own. His son-in-law
Usher, of
Boston, formerly an adherent of
Andros, and a great speculator in lands, was appointed, under him, lieutenant-governor.
Such was the
English revolution of 1688.
It valued the uncertain claims of an English merchant more than the liberties of a province.
Indeed, that revolution loved, not liberty, but privilege, and respected popular liberty only where it had the sanction of a vested right.
In 1692, the new government for New Hampshire
was organized by
Usher.
The civil history of that colony, for a quarter of a century, is a series of lawsuits about land.
Complaints against
Usher were met by counter complaints, till
New Hampshire was placed, with
Massachusetts, under the government of Bellamont, and a judiciary, composed of men attached to
the colony, was instituted.
Then, and for years afterwards, followed scenes of confusion;—trials in the colonial courts, resulting always in verdicts against the pretended proprietary; appeals to the
English monarch in council; papers withheld; records of the court under
Cranfield destroyed; orders from the lords of trade and the crown disregarded by a succession of inflexible juries; a compromise proposed, and rendered of no avail by the death of one of the parties; an Indian deed manufactured to protect the cultivators of the soil; till, at last, the heirs of the proprietary abandoned their claim in despair.
The yeomanry of New Hamp-
