however, and by the beginning of the Civil War the state was almost free of debt. During that war the state incurred an indebtedness of about $4,236,000; this it reduced to $2,205,695 in 1872, and then assumed the war debt of the towns and cities, making its total indebtedness again $4,138,124. On the 1st of September 1908 the funded debt of the state was $706,700.
History.—Martin Pring was at the mouth of the Piscataqua in 1603 and, returning to England in the same year, gave an account of the New England coast from Casco Bay to Cape Cod Bay. Samuel de Champlain discovered the Isles of Shoals and sailed along the New Hampshire coast in 1605, and much more information concerning this part of the New World was gathered in 1614 by Captain John Smith, who in his Description of New England refers to the convenient harbour at the mouth of the Piscataqua and praises the country back from the rocky shore. Under the leadership of Sir Ferdinando Gorges there was formed in 1620 the Council for New England, which procured from King James I. a grant of all the country from sea to sea between 40° and 48° N. latitude, and which made the following grants bearing upon the history of New Hampshire by their inducement to settlement, by determining the boundaries or by causing strife through their conflicts with one another: to John Mason, who has been called “the founder of New Hampshire,” on the 9th of March 1622, a grant of the region between the Salem and Merrimac rivers, under the name of Mariana; to John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges jointly, on the 10th of August 1622, a grant of the region between the Merrimac and Kennebec rivers for 60 m. inland, under the name of the Province of Maine; to David Thomson and associates, in 1622, a grant of six thousand acres near the mouth of the Piscataqua; to Sir Henry Roswell and associates, on the 19th of March 1628, a grant of the region from 3 m. south of the Charles river, “or to the southward of any and every part thereof” to 3 m. N. of the Merrimac river, “or to the northward of any and every part thereof,” and extending west to the South Sea or Pacific Ocean, under the name of Massachusetts; to John Mason alone, on the 7th of November 1629, a grant of that portion of the “Province of Maine” which lay between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua, under the name of New Hampshire; to the Laconia Company, consisting of Gorges, Mason and associates, on the 17th of November 1629, a grant of an extensive territory (which was called Laconia) around the Lake of the Iroquois (Lake Champlain) together with one thousand acres at some place to be selected along the sea coast; to Edward Hilton, on the 12th of March 1630, the grant of a tract on and about the lower part of Dover Neck; to the Laconia Company, in November 1631, a grant of a tract on both sides of the Piscataqua river near its mouth, known as the Pescataway grant; and finally to John Mason, on the 22nd of April 1635, a short time before the Council surrendered its charter, a grant of the region between the Salem river on the south and the Piscataqua and Salmon Falls rivers on the north-east and extending 60 m. inland, under the name of New Hampshire. Mason died in December of this year, and New Hampshire, unlike the other colonies from which the United States originated, New Jersey and Delaware excepted, never received a royal charter.
The first settlement of which there is indisputable evidence was established in 1623 by David Thomson at Little Harbor, now in the town of Rye. Thomson was the head of a company which was organized for fishing and trading and whose entire stock was to be held jointly for five years. He built a house on Odiorne’s Point overlooking Little Harbor, and, although he removed to an island in Boston Harbor in 1626, he may have continued to superintend the business of the company until the expiration of the five-year term. At least there was a settlement here which was assessed in 1628, and it may not have been completely abandoned when colonists sent over by the Laconia Company arrived in 1630. The Laconia Company received its first grant under the erroneous impression that the Piscataqua river had its source in or near Lake Champlain, and its principal object was to establish an extensive fur trade with the Iroquois Indians. Although Lake Champlain could not be reached by boat up the Piscataqua, and although the enterprise was ultimately a failure, the company sent over colonists who occupied the house left standing by Thomson, and, not far away, built “Mason Hall” or the “Great House” in what is now Portsmouth, a name (for the entire settlement) that replaced “Strawberry Banke” in 1653. Edward Hilton with a few associates appears to have established a settlement on Dover Point about the time of Thomson’s arrival at Little Harbor, and in the Hilton grant of 1630 it is stated that he had already built houses and planted there; as early as 1639 this settlement was named Dover. In 1638 the Rev. John Wheelwright, an Antinomian leader who had been banished from Massachusetts, founded Exeter on land claimed to have been bought by him from the Indians. In the same year Massachusetts encouraged friendly Puritans to settle Hampton on the same purchase, and about a year later this colony organized Hampton as a town with the right to send a deputy to the General Court. Serious dissensions had already arisen between Puritan and Anglican factions in Dover, and Captain John Underhill, another Antinomian, became for a time a leader of the Puritan faction. Puritan Massachusetts was naturally hostile to the Antinomians at Exeter as well as to the Anglicans at Strawberry Banke. Although Exeter, in 1639, Dover, in 1640, and Strawberry Banke, not later than 1640, adopted a plantation covenant, these settlements were especially weak from lack of a superior tribunal, and appeals had been made to Massachusetts as early as 1633. Moreover, the grants of Massachusetts and Mariana were clearly in conflict. Under these conditions Massachusetts discovered a new claim for its northern boundary. The charter of that colony was drafted under the impression that the Merrimac flowed east for its entire course, but now an investigation was in progress which was to show that its source in Lake Winnepesaukee was several miles north of any of the four settlements in New Hampshire. Accordingly, Massachusetts resolved to make the most of the clause in the charter which described the northern boundary as three English miles north of the Merrimac river, “or to the northward of any and every part thereof,” to ignore the conflicting grants to Mason and to extend its jurisdiction over the offending settlements. Dover submitted in 1641, Strawberry Banke (Portsmouth) soon afterwards and Exeter in 1643.
The heirs of Mason protested, but little was done about the matter during the period of Puritan ascendancy in the mother country. Immediately after the resignation of Richard Cromwell, however, Robert Tufton Mason (a grandson of the original proprietor), who had become sole heir in 1655, began petitioning first parliament and later the king, for relief. The attorney-general, to whom the petition to the king was referred, reported that the petitioner had a “good and legal right and title to the lands.” The commission appointed by the king in 1664 to hear and determine complaints in New England decided that Mason’s lands were not within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, and made an attempt to set up a government under which his claims could be tried, but this was a failure. In 1674 Mason offered to surrender his rights to the Crown in return for one-third of the customs, rents, fines, and other profits derived therefrom, but although the offer was at first favourably considered it was finally declined. Mason then petitioned again, and this time Massachusetts was requested to send agents to England to answer his complaints. They arrived in December 1676, and the case was tried before the Lords Chief Justices of the King’s Bench and Common Pleas in April 1677. Mason presented no claim to the right of government, and as to the title to the lands claimed by him the court decided that this was a question between him and the several tenants to be determined by the local court having jurisdiction in such matters. Thereupon Mason, in January 1679, petitioned the king to appoint a governor who should have jurisdiction over all the lands which he claimed, and on the 18th of September of this year New Hampshire was constituted a separate province with a government vested in a president and council appointed by the king and an assembly chosen by the people. This was the principal outcome of Mason’s persistent efforts to establish his rights to
