nando Gorges in the earlier patent of Laconia. In none of these were there any rights of government beyond what any proprietor under the king might exercise within his es tate. Gorges, therefore, in 1639, obtained a charter which gave him rights of govern ment within his entire territory, which, in this instrument, was re-named New Somer set. It extended from the Piscataqua River, on the south, to the Kennebec River, and from the sea to the interior indefinitely. George Cleaves, and his associates of the Lygonia patent, submitted to the govern ment which the lord-proprietor now estab lished; while Purchas followed his custom of yielding quietly to " the powers that be." The government of New Somersetshire, which had begun well, was not steadily sus tained, so that in 1653 no fragment of it was to be found; and whatever government ex isted was from voluntary association. This condition, of course, permitted Cleaves to resume his sway in the Lygonia patent, and Purchas to settle back on his established relation with the Bay government. So many disorders and grievances arose in and between the settlements under this system, that the larger number of settlers under the Gorges patent, by formal petition or otherwise, applied for admission to the charter privileges of the Bay Colony. There were various reasons for which the Bay authorities desired to grant these re quests; but they were puzzled in regard to the grounds for such action in a patent which they did not own, in a province which was under another charter. As their own charter was older by eleven years, they concluded that if it contained any provision whereby the Bay government could exercise authority under it in another patent with out assignment to them of the latter, such provision might be made the warrant for exercising powers of government even in territory covered by another charter, if this had fallen into disuse.
The charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony embraced all the lands " within the space of three English miles to the north ward of the river Merrimack, and to the northward of any and every part thereof." All the length of this river known to the grantors of the charter lay in a nearly east and west direction, and the terms had been inconsiderately taken, they said, to mean that the line should run parallel to the stream; but it was now decided that the course of the river precluded that meaning, and that the parallelism should be with the equator, as a parallel of latitude. A careful survey was now made for the true northern line of the charter; and the source of the river was on August 1, 1652, found to be 430 40' 12" north latitude; and a line carried eastward from this intersected Casco Bay about midway between its north ern and southern extremities. A re-survey, made in 1672, pushed the boundary five miles further north, so that its eastward ex tension took in all the coast settlements as far as the middle of Penobscot Bay; and this became the basis of the county of Devonshire, established by the Bay govern ment in 1674. It covered, also, the grant of Charles II to the Duke of York. Accord ingly it was now held that the Gorges charter was an infringement of their own, issued under a misapprehension of its real boundaries. Courts under the Bay Colony's charter were instituted with much gladness of many in Maine as well as of the Bay people, — and with feeble protests only from Cleaves, at Casco Neck, and Edward Godfrey, at Agamenticus; the latter claiming to be governor, and himself with his council to be the rightful government in the Province of Maine, or County of Somerset. In his second petition to the House of Commons for redress, however, Godfrey makes the admission that he is without authority, — as follows : " We beg leave also to state that divers inhabitants of this Prov
