ts to
arrange with the inhabitants the terms of incorporation. The towns
were guaranteed their liberties, allowed representation in the
Massachusetts general court, and exempted from the requirements of the
Massachusetts constitution that all voters and officers must be
members of the Congregational church.[14]

In 1643 Exeter followed the example of Dover and Strawberry Bank by
accepting the protection of Massachusetts, but it thereby lost its
founder. Being under sentence of banishment, Mr. Wheelwright withdrew
to the territory of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, where, having obtained a
patent, he founded the city of Welles. In 1644 he applied to Winthrop,
and was permitted on a slight submission to take charge of the church
at Hampton.[15] After several years he visited England, where he was a
favorite of Cromwell. At the Restoration he returned and settled at
Salisbury, in Massachusetts, where he died in 1679. He is perhaps the
single bright light in the ecclesiastical history of early New
Hampshire.[16]

The four towns--Dover, Strawberry Bank, Exeter, and Hampton, with
Salisbury and Haverhill on the northern banks of the Merrimac--were,
in 1643, made to constitute the county of Norfolk, one of the four
counties into which Massachusetts was then divided.[17]

A similar fortune at a later date overtook the townships to the north
of the Piscataqua. The origin of the name "Maine," applied to the
regions of these settlements, has never been satisfactorily explained.
Possibly it was a compliment to Henrietta Maria, the French wife of
Charles I.; more probably the fishermen used it to distinguish the
continent from the islands. The term "Maine" first occurs in the grant
to Gorges and Mason, August 22, 1622, which embraced all the land
between the Merrimac and the Sagadahoc, or Kennebec. By Mason's patent
in 1629 the country west of the Piscataqua was called New Hampshire,
and after that Maine was a name applied to the region between the
Piscataqua and Kennebec. In more modern times it was extended to the
country beyond, as far as the St. Croix River.

Under Gorges' influence Christopher Levett made a settlement in 1623
on an island in Saco Bay which has been called "the first regular
settlement in Maine."[18] The same year some Plymouth merchants
planted a colony upon Monhegan Island, which had been long a place of
general resort for fishermen.[19] And about the same time Gorges made
a settlement on the "maine" at Saco,[20] u