England_, I., 69, II., 186.]

[Footnote 32: Winthrop, _New England_, II., 186, 313, 390.]

[Footnote 33: Maine Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d series, VII., 266,
267.]

[Footnote 34: Maine Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d series, VII., 266,
267; Williamson, _Maine_, I., 326.]

[Footnote 35: _Mass. Col. Records_, IV., pt. i., 70.]

[Footnote 36: Williamson, _Maine_, I., 336.]

[Footnote 37: Maine Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d series, VII., 273.]

[Footnote 38: Ibid., 274; _Mass. Col. Records_, IV., pt. i., 122-126.]

[Footnote 39: _Mass. Col. Records_, IV., pt. i., 129.]

[Footnote 40: Williamson, _Maine_, I., 340, 341.]

[Footnote 41: _Mass. Col. Records_, IV., pt. i., 157-165, 359-360.]

CHAPTER XVII

COLONIAL NEIGHBORS

(1643-1652)

Although the successive English colonies--Virginia, Maryland,
Plymouth, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Haven, New
Hampshire, and Maine--each sprang from separate impulses, we have seen
how one depended upon another and how inextricably their history is
connected each with the other. Even the widely separated southern and
northern groups had intercourse and some transmigration. Thus the
history of each colony is a strand in the history of England in
America.

In the same way the history of each colony and of the colonies taken
together is interwoven with that of colonies of other European
nations--the Spaniards, French, and Dutch--planted at first distant
from the English settlements, but gradually expanding into dangerous
proximity. It was from a desire to protect themselves against the
danger of attack by their foreign neighbors and to press their
territorial claims that the New England group of English colonies
afforded the example of the first American confederation.

Danger to the English colonization came first from the Spaniards, who
claimed a monopoly of the whole of North America by virtue of
discovery, the bull of Pope Alexander VI., and prior settlement. When
Sir Francis Drake returned from his expedition in 1580 the Spanish
authorities in demanding the return of the treasure which he took from
their colonies in South America vigorously asserted their pre-emptive
rights to the continent. But the English government made this famous
reply--"that prescription without possession availed nothing, and that
every nation had a right by the law of nature to freely navigate those
seas and transport colonies to those parts where the Spaniards do not
in