Council for New England
COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND
COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND, the name of the Ply mouth branch of the Virginia Company after its members reorganized and incorporated under a new charter in 1620. This charter vested the council with the right to settle and govern colonies along the Atlantic coast between Long Island to the Bay of Fundy, as well as with monopolistic trade and fishing rights in that territory. In many respects the council appeared to be a trading company, but its members, who were nobles and landed gentry rather than merchants, were more interested in developing the land than in trade. They Pursued their objectives by granting much of the region to council members as fiefs and manors organized pursuant to English land law. They Gave the rest of the land to other individuals or groups along with rights of local self-government, although these recipients remained subject to the authority of the council's governor general.
Sir Ferdinando Gorges, president of the council, was the dominating figure throughout its history, but his agents in New England enjoyed limited success. From time to time the council tried to reorganize so as to invigorate the enterprise, and they considered exchanging their charter for one that better represented the landed interests of its members. Nothing came of these attempts, and the enterprise failed. Eventually, New England was colonized not through the efforts of this council, but through the unexpected success of two small grants to nonmembers: the Pilgrims who settled on Cape Cod in 1620 and the Puritans who settled in Massachusetts Bay in 1629. These migrants altered the character of settlement in New England by replacing the council's conception of a single aristocratic and Anglican province with a patchwork of small, independent, middling Puritan and separatist colonies.
The Massachusetts Bay grant was particularly significant in that the grantees' powers of self-government derived not from the council, but directly from the king. Thus, the council could not maintain unchallenged authority in directing New England's growth. The council attempted to annul the Massachusetts charter by surrendering its "grand patent" and asking the king to regrant the whole region in partitions to preselected council members. The process of negotiating the transfer would enable the new proprietors to confirm or cancel previous grants, including the Massachusetts Bay patent. In 1635 the council therefore surrendered its charter and designated eight members who would receive land by royal charters. The proprietors initiated proceedings against the Massachusetts Bay Company, and Gorges was appointed governor-general of New England to preserve the administrative unity of the region. But the English Civil War interrupted this vigorous campaign. Only one charter, that of Maine to Gorges, made its way through the seals, and the action against Massachusetts Bay came to naught. On the other hand, twenty years of civil war and Puritan governance in England gave the Puritans in New England the opportunity to strengthen their foot-hold and develop the region into a number of little colonies more or less centering around Massachusetts.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clark, Charles E. The Eastern Frontier: The Settlement of Northern New England, 1610–1763. New York: Knopf, 1970.
Cooke, Jacob Ernest, et al., eds. Encyclopedia of the North American Colonies. New York: Scribners, 1993.
Labaree, Benjamin W. Colonial Massachusetts. Millwood, N.Y.: KTO, 1979.
Morison, Samuel Eliot. Builders of the Bay Colony. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.
Viola F.Barnes/s. b.
See alsoColonial Settlements ; Massachusetts Bay Colony ; Plymouth Colony ; Plymouth, Virginia Company of ; Puritans and Puritanism ; Separatists, Puritan .