Day, Adams, and perhaps two or
three others, retained their claims to allotments, making no
improvements, and contributing nothing by their presence or tithes to
the growth of the settlement, thus becoming effectual stumbling blocks
in the way of progress. Prescott, very reasonably, held this a
grievance, and having no other means of redress asked equitable judgment
in the matter from the magistrates, in a petition which cannot be found.
His answer was the following official snub:

"Whereas John Prescot & others, the inhabitants of Nashaway p'ferd a
petition to this Courte desiringe power to recover all common charges of
all such as had land there, not residinge w'th them, for answer
whereunto this Court, understandinge that the place before mentioned is
not fit to make a plantation, (so a ministry to be erected and
mayntayned there,) which if the petitioners, before the end of the next
session of this Courte, shall not sufficiently make the sey'd place
appeare to be capable to answer the ends above mentioned doth order that
the p'ties inhabitinge there shalbe called there hence, & suffered to
live without the meanes, as they have done no longer." This dire threat
of the closing sentence may have been simply "sound and fury, signifying
nothing," or Prescott may have been able to prove to the authorities
that Nashaway was fit and waiting for its St. John, but found none
willing for the service. In fact, its St. John was then a junior at
Harvard College, writing a pasquinade to post upon the Ipswich
meeting-house, and Nashaway was "suffered to live without the meanes,"
waiting for him until 1654.

John Prescott retained possession of his early home,--the site of the
"trucking house," which he had purchased of John Cowdall,--as long as he
lived, but did not reside there many years. No sooner had the plantation
attained the dignity of a township under the classic name of Lancaster,
than its founder bent all his energies towards those enterprises best
calculated to promote the comfort and prosperity of its then
inhabitants, and to attract by material advantages, a desirable and
permanent immigration. His practical eye had doubtless long before
marked the best site for a mill in all the region round about, and on
the slope, scarce a gun shot away, he set up a new home, afterwards well
known to friend and savage foe as Prescott's Garrison. Those who remain
of the generation familiar with this region before the invention of t