This was the compact little settlement of twenty-seven householders who had gathered themselves and their families into a church and community. The next step was incorporation as a town. *1 At a general court held on the fourth and fifth days of October 1636 it was ordered "That the towne of Scituate be allowed (vizt, the purchasers and freemen) to dispose of the lands beyond the North River, except that wch was before disposed on to others. And also it be allowed them to make such orders in their township for their convenient & comfortable living as they shall find necessary, provided they have, in case of justice, recourse unto Plymouth, as before."
Timothy Hatherly was already an Assistant and Humphrey Turner was constable, each chosen by the whole body of the freemen of the colony to serve in their respective capacities. In the first year of the incorporation James Cudworth was chosen a constable and Gilson, Foster and Hatch members of the Grand jury.
The municipal territory was soon found to be too small. Before the incorporation, there had been a suggestion that the land lying between the South River (in Marshfield) and the North River might be "more beneficiall" to Scituate than to Plymouth, and Governor Prence, William Collier, John Alden, Mr. Brown and John Howland had been authorized to allot it if they so found it. They did not; they reserved it; but the freemen of Scituate, especially Hatherly, Turner, Tilden, Cudworth, Gilson and Robinson who were among the best men in the colony, desired one of the banks of the North River upon which to enlarge. Hardly had they begun their corporate existence as a town when they set about the consummation of this wish. They addressed the government at Plymouth complaining that "the place is too straite for them, the lands adjacent being stony, and not convenient to plant upon." Upon these representations a court of Assistants held on the first day of January 1637 passed the following order:
"Whereas certain freemen of Scituate, vizt Mr. Tymothy Hatherly, Mr. John Lothrop, William Gilson, Anthony Annable, James Cudworth, Edward Foster, Henry Cobb, Isaack Robinson, George Kennerick, Henry Rowley, Samuell Fuller, John Cooper, Bernard Lumbard, George Lewis and Humphrey Turner, have complayned that they have such smale porportions of lands there alloted them that they cannot subsist upon them, the Court of Assistants have this day granted them all that upland & necke of land lying betweene the North & South Rivers, and all the meadow ground from the North River to the Beaver Pond, and all along by the North River side, and to hold the breadth from the South River trey, or passage, by a straight line to the North River, so far up into the land as it shall be marked and set forth unto them. Always provided and upon condition that they make a towneship there & inhabit upon the said land, and that all differences betwixt them and Mr. Vassall or others of Scituate be composed & ended before the next Court, or if any doe then remayne, that they be referred to the consideration of the Governor & Assistants, that their removall from Scituate may be without offance. And also provided and upon condition that whereas a proportion of two or three hundred acres of the lands above said should have been granted to Mr. Vassall, upon condition he should have erected a ferry to transport men and cattell over the North River at these rates, vizt, for a man a penny, for a horse four pence, and for every beast four pence; and to make causes (causeways) or passages through the marshes on both sides the ferry both for man & beast to passe by, which he was willing to doe, and to answere all damages which might happen in default thereof; and the Court in their judgments did conceive it more expedient to prefer the necessities of a number before one private person. That the said freemen of Scituate above named do so erect a ferry over the North River, to transport men and beasts at the rates above said, and make such passages on both sides through the marshes to the ferry, & provide a sufficient man to attend the same, that may answere all damages which may happen through his neglect thereof, or else the graunt abovesaid to be voyde."
Vassall, in 1635 had lands granted to him on the North River for the purpose of a home and plantation. These he called "West Newland" and his residence, the house beautiful, -"Belle house." He was a learned man for the times and ambitious to become a landed proprietor and person of importance in the new colony. His neighbors evidently did not take him at his own valuation. The only public service which he performed among them was to "sett" bounds between disputing land owners and this, probably because he was a competent surveyor and possessed one of the few "instruments" in the colony. The great objection to him was apparently his endeavor to secure so large a tract, containing so much valuable salt marsh, and bordering the river for himself.
The differences which existed between Mr. Vassall and his neighbors who thus took away from him "two or three hundred acres" began almost immediately upon his arrival here. Vassall had been one of the patentees of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay and had been in Boston with Gov.
Winthrop in 1630. He had returned to England but had come again in 1634 and located at Scituate. Edward Winslow wrote of him "he is a man never at rest, but when in the fire of contention" *2 and Governor Winthrop said he was "a man of busy and factious spirit *3 always opposite to the civil governments of the country and the way of our churches." Deane, on the other hand, records that he united himself harmoniously with Mr. Lathrop's church and enjoyed that place until 1642 when President Chauncey came to be pastor. *4 Governor Hutchinson says of him:
"Mr. William Vassall, as well as his brother Samuel Vassall, were gentlemen of good circumstances in England, but do not seem to have been fully of the same sentiment in matters of religion with the planters in general: and altho William came over with the first company (to Boston), yet he soon went back to England. He returned a few years after to New England and settled at Scituate in Plimouth Colony, not because they were reputed more rigid than the Massachusetts people. When Jamaica was taken by Cromwell, he laid the foundation of several fine estates there, enjoyed by his posterity to the present time. William Vassell as we have observed came over with the first patenties and was of the Assistants in 1630, but soon after returned to England, and in the year 1635 came back to New England and settled at Scituate in the Colony of New Plimouth. He was a gentleman of a pleasant, affable disposition, but always opposite to the government both in Massachusetts and Plimouth. Scituate in Plimouth is contiguous to Hingham in Massachusetts, and Mr. Vassall had much influence in the latter colony as well as the former and had laid a scheme for petitions of such as were non freemen to the courts of both colonies and upon the petition being refused, to apply to the parliament pretending they were subjected to an arbitrary power, Extra-judicial proceedings, &c."
However correct this latter estimate of him may be it is true that he quarrelled violently with Chauncey over the question of baptism and caused a disruption in his congregation which was not healed until after Vassal's departure in 1646.
While it is true that both sides were capable of making a good fight and that the freemen won in the first encounter -before the court, it is not clear that they lived up to the condition imposed upon the grant, -that of maintaining a ferry. On April 2, 1638 Vassall obtained this order from the Court:
"Two hundred acres of upland and a competency of meadow lands to be layed to that, are granted to Mr. William Vassall to keepe a ferry over the north river where the old indian ferry was, and to transport men & beasts at these rates vizt, for a man, 12 & for a beast 4 d, a horse and his rider 4 d and to make the way passable for man and beast through the marshes on both sides the river at his owne charges, and to keepe them in repaire from tyme to tyme & Captain Standish & Mr. Alden are appoynted to set the land forth to him." *5 Even assuming that Standish and Alden attended to this duty the land was not immediately given him. The Scituate freemen were still fractious.
They insisted that Vassall take the oath of "fidelitie," *6 which he did in the following February. This was supposed to settle the whole trouble. Bradford, Winslow and Browne were appointed to view the "neck of land granted unto Mr. William Vassall & to set the same forth to him execept there be some such difficultie therein that will require the further consideration of the Court." *7 Finally, on the third day of June 1639 he was granted a "parcell of land to lye in forme of a long square" *8 containing, with the marsh, one hundred and fifty acres, which included his original Newlands.
The inhabitants of Scituate were also appeased. On November 30, 1640, at a sitting of the Court of Assistants it was enacted that:
"Whereas the inhabitants of the towne of Scituate are greatly straitened for lands and there is necessyty that they should be enlarged, and that at the North River, where they desire to have supply for their wants, there is five hundred acres and upwards granted already to divers persons of Plymouth and Duxburrow, the Court doth grant (that those persons to whome said lands are granted, having their several grants layd forth unto them) that the said inhabitants of Scituate shall have two miles *9 in length from the end of the said graunts, up the said North River, and a mile in breadth (if it be there to be bad when the foresaid graunts are layd forth) and if not then to abate of that proportion & Mr. Timothy Hatherly, Edward Foster & Humphrey Turner shall dispose the said lands to such persons of Scituate as they shall think fitt to be supplyed." *10
Through these orders all of the boundaries of the town became fixed and settled and were stated by the Court March 7, 1642 to be as follows:
"It is ordered by the Court that the bounds of Scituate towneship, on the westerly side of the towne shall be up the Indian Head River, to the pond *11 which is the head of the said river and from thence to Accord Pond, and from thence to the sea by the lyne that is the bound betwixt Massachusetts & Plymouth." *12
Its easterly boundary was the sea and its southerly boundary, the North River. *13 Thus we have a definition of the town boundaries, readily discernible to-day-Bound brook (so-called from the fact that it was the division line between the two provinces) on the North, the sea upon the east; North River and its headwaters, the Indian Head River to Indian Head Pond, upon the south, and a line drawn thence through Ford's Farms to Accord Pond at Hingham on the west. The towns of Pembroke, Hanover, Abington, Rockland and Norwell have all been taken either in whole or in part from this tract.
*1 "At the first settlement of the Colony, towns consisted of clusters of inhabitants dwelling near each other, which, by the effect of legislative acts, designating them by name and conferring upon them the powers of managing their own prudential affairs, electing representatives and town officers, making by-laws and disposing subject to the paramount control of the Legislature, of unoccupied lands within their territory became in effect municipal or quasi corporations, without any formal act of incorporation." Gray, C. J. in Hill vs. Boston 122 Mass. Rep. page 349"
*2 Pamphlet entitled "New England's Salamander Discovered."
*3 II Winthrop 260.
*4 Deane's History of Scituate page 367.
*5 Plymouth Colony Records Vol. I Page 82.
*6 Plymouth Colony Records Vol. 1, page 103.
*7 Ibidem, page 120.
*8 Ibidem, page 124.
*9 in 1788 by mutual agreement between Scituate and Marshfield this tract which was always called "The Two Miles" was released to the latter town.
*10 Plymouth Colony Records, Vol. 1, Page 168.
*11 Indian Head Pond, now in Pembroke.
*12 Plymouth Colony Records, Vol. II, Page 54.
*13 Ibidem, page 54.
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