and old " Sheepscot farms," up to 1689; and matured in the administration of law, as now, at Wiscasset Point in 1794. The unfolding of the charter of April ID, 1606, started English homestead life and industries on North American shores in lat. N. 430 to 440. One hundred and twenty English colonists landed under the English flag. The site of a town was chosen. The first act was solemn conse cration of the spot by the worship of God and a sermon, according to English canoni cal law and formularies of the English Epis copal Church. A code of law was promulged
The president with sworn assistants were the court officials. It had a seal, " Sigellum Regis Magnae Britainiae, Franciae et Hiberniae," l was the legend of one side; and on the other, " Pro Concillio Secundae Coloniae, Virginiae." All the rights, privileges and liberties of English home-born citizenship were guar anteed. Trial by jury and the writ of habeas corpus were grants of right to the people.2 Every safeguard of life, personal liberty and property, to the English common law appurtenant, was set about the new home stead life of the English race here, as a
PEMAQUID HARBOR. (Site of '* Jamestown." Capital of Cornwall County (1665) and Kurt Charles.)
and civil polity organized, and a court of law opened. Sir George Popham was nominated, not as a viceroy, governor or mayor, but as president of the embryo state, to wield the sovereignty thereof, and duly inducted to office, with subordinates, by solemn oath. The material fruits of the movement were an English hamlet of fifty houses, ware house, a church with a steeple to it, an elaborately entrenched fort, well mounted with guns, a shipyard with a thirty-ton vessel on the stocks and a court of law.
hedge, even to the use of the elective fran chise in the civil office of chief magistrate.3 So all the forces of Christian civilization were planted at Sagadahoc. Tumults, re bellion, conspiracies, mutinies, sedition, man slaughter, incest, rape and murder were capital crimes. Adultery, drunkenness and vagrancy were penal offenses.4 1 Popham Memorial vol., Appendix S. p. 133. - Idem, Appendix A, p. 94. 8 "These my loving subjects shall have the right annu ally to elect a president and make all needful laws for their own government," etc. Memo, vol., page 94.
- See Charter, April 10, 1606.
