242 MASON bar in June, 1791, and opened an office at West- moreland, N. H. In 1794 he removed to Wai- pole, and in 1797 to Portsmouth. In 1802 he was appointed attorney general of New Hamp- shire, and soon became the acknowledged head of his profession in the state. In 1813 he was chosen to the United States senate, and he took a leading part in the debates of that body on the subjects connected with the war of 1812, delivering important speeches on the embargo in February, 1814, and on the con- scription bill in December, 1815. In 1817 he resigned his seat in the senate, and resumed practice. He was afterward for several ses- sions a member of the legislature of New Hampshire, in which he took a leading share in the revision of the state code of legislation. He drafted the resolutions and report of the legislature on the Virginia resolutions touching the Missouri compromise. In the summer of 1832 he removed to Boston, and continued to practise in the courts till he entered his 70th year. As a lawyer he contended on equal terms with such men as Chief Justice Parsons, Judge Story, and Daniel Webster. MASON, John, major of the forces of Connec- ticut colony, born in England in 1600, died in Norwich, Conn., in 1672. He served in the Netherlands as a volunteer under Sir Thomas Fairfax, and about 1630 emigrated to Dorches- ter, Mass., whence in 1635 he removed to Con- necticut, and aided in founding the town of Windsor. The settlers were in constant dread of the Pequot Indians, who inhabited a tract of country lying between the Pequot river, now called the Thames, and the territories of the Narragansetts in Ehode Island. The slaugh- ter of a party of whites at Wethersfield in April, 1637, at length called for retaliatory measures ; and at a general court convened in Hartford, Mason was commissioned, with a force of 90 men, to descend the Connecticut and attack the Pequots at the mouth of the Pequot. river. Accompanied by 70 friendly Indians of the Mohegan tribe, he reached the English fort at Saybrook, at the mouth of the Connecticut, in the middle of May, and thence put off into Long Island sound,"intending to follow the coast to the country of the Nar- ragansetts, and thence by a retrograde march along the shore fall upon his enemies unawares. On the 23d he landed in Narragansett bay, near Point Judith, secured the cooperation of 200 Narragansetts, and having sent back his boats to meet him at the mouth of the Pequot, proceeded by quick marches to the Mystic river, in the neighborhood of which were the two principal forts of the Pequots. Although his Indian al- lies were now swelled in numbers to about 500, such was their terror of the Pequots that Mason was compelled to commence the attack .iliM.-t unaided. Before daybreak on the 26th
- >rised the nearest fort, and, gaining an
entrance within the palisades, fell sword in hand upon the enemy. But finding it difficult to dislodge the Indians, he set fire to their wig- warns, the whites and their allies forming a circle around the fort to prevent escape. Be- tween 600 and 700 Pequots perished, 7 were captured, and 7 escaped. Of the English 2 were killed and 20 wounded. He then marched to the mouth of the Pequot river, into which his vessels sailed soon after. They were at- tacked on the way by 300 Indians from the other fort, who however soon retired. Ma- son, putting his wounded aboard the vessels, marched with a small party by land to Saybrook. Aided by a party from Massachusetts, he then pursued the remnant of the Pequots toward New York, killed and captured many more, and divided the few who remained in Connec- ticut between the Mohegans and Narragansetts, stipulating that the very name of Pequot should become extinct. He thus secured a general peace with the Indians, which remained un- broken for 40 years. After the Pequot war he removed to Saybrook, at the request of its set- tlers, for the defence of the colony, whence in 1659 he removed to Norwich. He was major of the colonial forces more than 30 years, and between 1660 and 1670 he was deputy gover- nor of Connecticut. He was also a magistrate from 1642 to 1668. At the request of the general court of Connecticut, he prepared an account of the Pequot war, published by In- crease Mather in 1677, and republished, with an introduction and notes by the Rev. Thomas Prince (Boston, 1736). See Sparks's " Amer- ican Biography," 2d series, vol. iii. MASON. I. John Mitchell, an American clergy- man, born in New York, March 19, 1770, died there, Dec. 26, 1829. His father was of Scotch birth, and pastor of an Associate Reformed church in New York. He graduated at Co- lumbia college in 1789, and entered in 1791 the university of Edinburgh, but was recalled in 1792 by intelligence of his father's death, and succeeded to his pastoral charge in 1793. He published a pamphlet consisting of " Letters " on frequent communion, which induced the Associate Reformed churches to relinquish their former practice of celebrating the communion but once or twice a year. He projected the plan of a theological seminary which was estab- lished in New York in 1804, and was appoint- ed its first professor of theology. In 1806 he projected the "Christian's Magazine," which he conducted for several years. In 1810 he re- signed his pastoral charge with the purpose of forming a new congregation. Dr. Mason hav- ing established more intimate relations with a Presbyterian church than were believed to be authorized by the constitution of his own de- nomination, the matter was brought before the synod in Philadelphia in 1811, and was the occasion of his "Plea for Sacramental Com- munion on Catholic Principles" (1816). He accepted in 1811 the office of provost of Co- lumbia college, which he resigned in 1816. In 1817 he resumed his pastoral charge. In 1821 he became president of Dickinson college, which office he relinquished in 1824 and return-
