Property, Identity and Place in Seventeenth-Century New England

Property, Identity and Place in Seventeenth-Century New England A thesis submitted to the School of History of the University of East Anglia in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Elizabeth Jean Southard 26 July 2013 © This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that no quotation from the thesis, nor any information derived therefrom, may be published without the author’s prior, written consent. Abstract This thesis presents a study of the construction and defence of English settler-colonies in New England during the seventeenth century, focusing upon the relationship between ordinary people and their environment. This work initially examines the pre- exploration reports and the first few decades of settlement and how commodification and naming practices helped in translating the landscape into a familiar, useful and, most importantly, English place. This continues in Chapter Two with a study of the distribution and construction of towns, boundaries and familiar patterns of agricultural usage. This patterning reveals how early settlers perceived their world, and how they secured traditional English customs and patterns onto this uncultivated landscape. The final two chapters will examine challenges to this system, from within New England and across the Atlantic. Chapter Three focuses on the challenge of native land rights, which threatened to undermine the initial basis of conquest and discovery as claims to the land. However, this was overcome due the flexibility of narratives of ownership and possession and the addition of native land rights to English property regimes. Chapter Four examines the network of authority and ownership which crossed the Atlantic and throughout New England, and what happened when these systems and ideas were challenged by the creation of a new government under the Dominion of New England. This final chapter reveals how all of these concepts and themes about property wove together to re-create the relationship between English settlers and their land, albeit through new concepts and methods. ii Acknowledgements This work would not have been possible without the generous support of the History department at the University of East Anglia, who granted me funding for this thesis. I would also like to thank my supervisors, Malcolm Gaskill and Paul Warde for offering me their time, wisdom and unwavering support. I would not have had the courage and confidence to complete this work without their help. In particular, special thanks to Malcolm for his time and assistance in the last stretch of this degree. I would also like to thank my friends and family for their emotional support throughout this process. In particular, a thank you to my parents for not being offended when I didn’t call for several weeks because I had lost track of time and to my husband, Justin, for never complaining about the long hours or lack of free time over the past year. To detail all the help and support from my friends over the years would take up the better part of this thesis, but rest assured your actions did not go unnoticed. I would like to thank Helen Band and Simon Busby for their proof-reading and providing me with distraction and encouragement when it was required. Also thanks to Fiona Williamson for continuing to be supportive and helpful, even from the other side of the world. iii List of Abbreviations BL British Library, London BPL Boston Public Library CHS Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford Conn Recs Records of the Colony of Connecticut Correspondence Correspondence of Roger Williams CSL Connecticut State Library, Hartford GTA Gloucester Town Archives MHS Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston MSA Massachusetts State Library, Dorchester Rec MBC Records of Massachusetts Bay Company ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography RICR Rhode Island and Providence Colonial Records SHLA Springfield History Library & Archives Winthrop Journal The Journal of John Winthrop WMQ William and Mary Quarterly iv List of Illustrations Figure 1. ‘A Map of New England’, John Foster (1677)……………….. 5 Figure 2. ‘Map of New England’, John Smith (1624)…………………...39 Figure 3. ‘Map of New England’, John Smith (1635)………………...…40 Figure 4. Detail, ‘Map of New England’………………………………...41 Figure 5. Map of land laid out to Bilerica (1655)………………………. 80 Figure 6. Map of 150 acres near Plymouth line (1662) …………………82 Figure 7. Map of 500 acres between Concord and ‘Nashoue’…………...84 Figure 8. Map of 550 acres on Ipswich River (1659)……………………87 v ‘Thus, in the beginning, all the world was America’ -John Locke vi Contents Abstract ii List of Illustrations iii List of Abbreviations iv Acknowledgements v Contents vii Introduction 1 Seventeenth Century New England . 1 Historiography. 8 Themes . 12 Sources. 21 Structure . 24 Chapter 1: Claiming the Land 27 Discovery and Claiming . 29 Pre-Arrival to First Settlement . 35 Settlement and Renaming. 46 Conclusion . 59 Chapter 2: Dividing the Land 60 Patterns of Settlement . 61 Marking the Land . 76 Allocation of Resources . 88 Conclusion . 96 Chapter 3: The Trouble of Native Land Rights 98 Narratives of Waste and Salvation. 101 Doubts and Questions . 113 Narrative and Authority . 122 Conclusion . 136 vii Chapter 4: Property in the Atlantic World 138 Atlantic Division and Inward Rule . 140 Restoration and Investigation . 150 Ownership and Rights . 162 Conclusion . 174 Conclusions 176 Bibliography 187 viii Introduction This is a study of property, place and identity in seventeenth century New England. It will focus on the construction and defence of English places in the New World in order to understand the relationship between ordinary people and their environment. By studying the memories, words and actions of the people constructing these settlements this thesis will offer a fresh perspective on the first century of English colonization in North America. This will be achieved through: the examination of rituals of naming and discovery; the division and marking of the landscape; the use of narrative to establish natural and civil rights to the land; and negotiation and conflict over property regimes in the Atlantic world. In the following pages, I shall further expand upon the historical background to this study, and offer a more thorough examination of the themes, sources and methods which will be consulted. Seventeenth Century New England From its discovery in the late fifteenth century the landscape of the New World fascinated European explorers who were interested in natural resources, precious metals and trade. Even before settlement began, and following set patterns of ownership, European powers began carving up and dividing the land based on principles of ‘discovery’ and ‘conquest’. The earliest maps and reports, such as Juan de la Cosa’s 1 Mappa Mundi (1500) and Martin Waldseemüller’s, Universalis Cosmographia (1507), reflect this behaviour; in these maps they not only attempted to detail the new land but also depict ownership. In Cosmographia the accompanying text explained ‘as farmers usually mark off and divide their farms by boundary lines, so it has been our endeavour to mark the chief countries of the world by the emblems of their ruler’ and on ‘the fourth part of the world’ they continued this by including marks of European countries to indicate colonial claims. 1 On de la Cosa’s map, which features many more European claims, this is indicated with flags. 2 The growing body of literature about the new world fixated on the landscape and what could, and had been, taken. This was fuelled by the riches uncovered by Spanish explorers in the early sixteenth century. However, the relentless pursuit of profit led to backlash against the Spanish, who were painted as barbaric for their treatment of the indigenous population. 3 Other European powers also looked to colonial expansion in this century, though the focus was much more on the establishment of trading posts, rather than invasions. This was due to the limited interest of the French monarchs in overseas exploration who were much more interested in colonizing France than in establishing a New France. The Dutch also established trading posts, though their interests were more in the Far East than the New World at this time. The English, much like the French, were more interested in securing power locally, and focused their colonizing efforts on Ireland for much of the sixteenth century. 1 SMI Yale Map Collection 1507/2002 Martin Waldeseemüller ‘Universalis Cosmographia Secumdum Phtholomaei Traditonem et Americi Vespucii Alioru[m]que Lustrationes’ (1507); Toby Lester, The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth and the Epic Story of the Map that gave America its Name (London, 2009), p. 8. 2 SMI Yale Map Collection 1500B/1959 ‘Juan de la Cosa, “The Oldest Map of the New World”’ (1500) 3 The best example of this is Bartolome de la Casa, The Tears of the Indians: Being an Historical and True Account of the Cruel Massacres and Slaughters of above Twenty Million of Innocent People; Committed by the Spaniards (1541, London, 1656). James Muldoon notes that much of the criticism about Spanish conquest and colonization is due to growth of universities which fostered intellectual debate, The Americas in the Spanish World Order: The Justification for Conquest in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia PA, 1994); see also Lewis Hanke, The Spanish Struggle for Justice in the Conquest of

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