3 Nov. 1620, under the name of ‘The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New England in America,’ the patent of which granted them the territory between latitudes 40° and 48°, and extending through the mainland, from sea to sea. It was not, however, till after several attempts, and difficulties arising out of the intrusion of dissolute interlopers, that the colony of New Plymouth was permanently settled in 1628. Others followed, but in 1635 the council resigned its charter to the king. In 1639 Gorges obtained a new charter, constituting him lord proprietary of the province of Maine, with powers of jurisdiction for himself and heirs.
The great and lasting interest attaching to the foundation of the New England colonies has rendered this the most notable of the work of Gorges' long and busy life, of which, beyond this, only scanty traces now remain. In 1606 he was a commissioner for enforcing the orders of the council respecting the pilchard fishery, and in 1617 was engaged in a curious negotiation with the merchants and shipowners of the west-country, whom he was commissioned to invite to co-operate with those of London in measures for the suppression of piracy on the high seas, which, he wrote, ‘has in the last few years deprived the kingdom of no less than three hundred ships, with their lading and merchandises, and their seamen reduced to captivity’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. App. p. 265 a and b). In 1623 he commanded the Great Neptune, apparently his own ship, and one of those which Penington [see Penington, Sir John] was ordered to place at the disposal of the Marquis d'Effiat. Gorges more than shared the scruples of his admiral and brother captains; and under the pretext of requiring full security for the safe return of his ship, finally brought her back to England, when the others were delivered to the French (Gardiner, Hist. of England, v. 378–94). When the civil war broke out, Gorges adhered to the king, and is mentioned in 1642 as living at Bristol, and concerting measures for the defence of the town, in consequence of which he was denounced by the parliament as a delinquent (Barrett, Hist. of Bristol, p. 414; Seyer, Hist. of Bristol, ii. 310). The house which he then occupied is now Colston's School (ib. 404). His advanced age must, however, have rendered him incapable of taking any active part in the hostilities, and he does not seem to have been seriously disturbed. He died in 1647.
Gorges was married four times, and had issue, besides two daughters who both died young, two sons, John and Robert. Robert was in 1623 sent out as lieutenant-governor of the New England territory, with a large personal grant of land on the northern side of Massachusetts Bay. John succeeded to his father's vast territory, but left it to itself, and the interest of the Gorges family in it seems to have lapsed.
[America Painted to the Life, by Ferdinando Gorges, Esq. (4to, 1658–9), is a series of pamphlets edited by John's son. One of these, A Briefe Narration of the Originall Undertakings of the Advancement of Plantations into the Parts of America, especially showing the Beginning, Progress, and Continuance of that of New England, by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, is the basis of all other accounts of Gorges's colonial work. The others, though professing to be partly written by the old knight, are, in reality, crude compilations of little worth; Jardine's Criminal Trials, i. 314 et seq.; Archæologia, xxxiii. 241 et seq.; Appleton's Dict. of American Biography; The Gorges' Pedigree, by the Rev. Frederick Brown, in the Historical and Genealogical Register, January 1875 (Boston, Mass.), is not free from errors, which can be corrected by a reference to the Somersetshire Visitation of 1623, in the Harleian Society's Publications, vol. xi., and more fully in a transcript in the Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 5822 ff. 136, 137; other references in the text.]
GORHAM, GEORGE CORNELIUS (1787–1857), divine and antiquary, son of George James Gorham, merchant and banker, by Mary, eldest daughter of Thomas Graeme of Towthorpe, Yorkshire, was born at St. Neots, Huntingdonshire, 21 Aug. 1787, and baptised on 21 Sept. From 1793 he was educated in his native town under Thomas Laundy, a quaker. He entered Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1805, became Norrisian prizeman for an ‘Essay on Public Worship,’ 1808, third wrangler, second Smith's prizeman, and B.A. 1808, M.A. 1812, and B.D. 1820. In 1809 he resided in Edinburgh as a companion to a nobleman, and in the following year was elected a fellow of his college, an appointment which he held till 1827. Previous to his ordination in 1811, Dr. Thomas Dampier, bishop of Ely, instituted a private examination and threatened to withhold his consent for Gorham's unsoundness on the subject of baptismal regeneration. Gorham, however, stood firm, and the bishop gave way. For three years after his ordination he resided in Queens' College, taking private pupils and exercising his ministry in the neighbourhood of Cambridge. In 1814 he left college for the curacy of Beckenham, Kent.
