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Rhode Island would perhaps have been divided among
its neighbors.
‘From the first beginning of the
Providence colony,’—thus did the town-meeting address
Sir Henry Vane,—‘you have been a noble and true friend to an outcast and despised people; we have ever reaped the sweet fruits of your constant loving-kindness and favor.
We have long been free from the iron yoke of wolvish bishops; we have sitten dry from the streams of blood spilt by the wars in our native country.
We have not felt the new chains of the
Presbyterian tyrants, nor, in this colony, have we been consumed by the over-zealous fire of the (so called) godly Christian magistrates.
We have not known what an excise means; we have almost forgotten what tithes are. We have long drunk of the cup of as great liberties as any people, that we can hear of, under the whole heaven.
When we are gone, our posterity and children after us shall read, in our town-records, your loving-kindness to us, and our real endeavor after peace and righteousness.’
Far different were the early destinies of the Province of
Maine.
A general court was held at
Saco,
under the auspices of the
Lord Proprietary, who had drawn upon paper a stately scheme of government, with deputies and counsellors, a marshal and a treasurer of the public revenue, chancellors, and a master of the ordnance, and every thing that the worthy old man deemed essential to his greatness.
Sir Ferdinand
had ‘travailed in the cause above forty years,’ and expended above twenty thousand pounds; yet all the regalia which
Thomas Gorges, his trusty and wellbeloved cousin and deputy, could find in the principality, were not enough for the scanty furniture of a cottage.
Agamenticus, though in truth but ‘a poor ’
