en hautboys and soft-voiced recorders--all which suggests a
mediaeval castle, or a grim fortress in the time of Queen Elizabeth.
To the younger members of the community glass or crockery ware was an
unknown substance; to the elders it was a memory. An iron pot was the
pot-of-all-work, and their table utensils were of beaten pewter. The
diet was also of the simplest--pea-porridge and corn-cake, with a mug of
ale or a flagon of Spanish wine, when they could get it.

John Mason, who never resided in this country, but delegated the
management of his plantation at Ricataqua and Newichewannock to
stewards, died before realizing any appreciable return from his
enterprise. He spared no endeavor meanwhile to further its prosperity.
In 1632, three years before his death, Mason sent over from Denmark a
number of neat cattle, "of a large breed and yellow colour." The herd
thrived, and it is said that some of the stock is still extant on farms
in the vicinity of Portsmouth. Those old first families had a kind of
staying quality!

In May, 1653, the inhabitants of the settlement petitioned the General
Court at Boston to grant them a definite township--for the boundaries
were doubtful--and the right to give it a proper name. "Whereas the name
of this plantation att present being Strabery Banke, accidentlly soe
called, by reason of a banke where strawberries was found in this place,
now we humbly desire to have it called Portsmouth, being a name most
suitable for this place, it being the river's mouth, and good as any in
this land, and your petit'rs shall humbly pray," etc.

Throughout that formative period, and during the intermittent French
wars, Portsmouth and the outlying districts were the scenes of bloody
Indian massacres. No portion of the New England colony suffered more.
Famine, fire, pestilence, and war, each in turn, and sometimes in
conjunction, beleaguered the little stronghold, and threatened to wipe
it out. But that was not to be.

The settlement flourished and increased in spite of all, and as soon as
it had leisure to draw breath, it bethought itself of the school-house
and the jail--two incontestable signs of budding civilization. At a
town meeting in 1662, it was ordered "that a cage be made or some
other meanes invented by the selectmen to punish such as sleepe or take
tobacco on the Lord's day out of the meetinge in the time of publique
service." This salutary measure was not, for some reason, carried into
effec