372

CONTROVERSY RESPECTING THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS.

being divided among sixty or seventy persons (according to the lists on the back of the Charters)must be very inconsiderable and not amount to a greater sum than about six shillings for eachProprietor, and if matters had been conducted Without Fraud , no Complaint would have been madeat this day; But Governor Wentworth now imposed on by those Lists and the Parties engaged intaking out a number of Townships together have bought and sold, conveyed and reconveyed so often(without the least attention to any Settlement which should have been the principal concern) thatafter some hours examination of some of the Charters we have not been able to trace the Titlethrough a number of intricate Deeds notwithstanding the charters were granted so lately and theLands still uncultivated, so that the Council were under the necessity at last of giving it as theiropinion to me that the Grants should be made to particular persons in each Charter, upon their enter-ing into a Bond with good and sufficient security to reconvey to the remainder of the Proprietorswhom we could not at that time discover, the shares they were entitled to by the Charter; theseshares consisting each of 350 acres were publicly sold here and in all the neighbouring Provincesfor thirty shillings, and many persons who appeared before the Council to prove their Rights couldshew no better Title than under such Deeds, which sum was so far from being an adequate consid-eration for the Land that it only served to sett the Fraud in a stronger light. M r WentworthsFees were secured to him by his reserving for himself a Farm of Five hundred acres in each Town-ship, and the spot where it w r as to be taken up was in all the charters marked with the Initial Lresof his name. Besides this, other Reservations w'ere made of particular Lots under the Names ofsome members of the Council and public officers, which in some of the Townships amounted tobetween 5 and 6 Thousand Acres, and in others the number was much smaller. These shares havebeen distinguished among the Inhabitants of that part of the Country by the name of Reders , andin the Petitions of those who really intended to make Settlements, they were complained of asGrievances because the owners of them would not contribute to any public work which was carryingon & they requested that these might be granted to persons who would assist in making theSettlement. This Request was occasioned by the apprehensions they were under at that time, thatthese Shares w'ould still be reserved, and appropriated to the use of the Governor and Council here,but we soon relieved them from any uneasiness on that head by declaring all those shares on whichno Improvements had been made to be revested in the Crown and the greatest part of them havesince been granted to the reduced officers of the Army who have petitioned for them under HisMajesty’s Proclamation.

In order to support what I have advanced in regard to the small expence these Petitioners havebeen at for their Charters, as Mr. Wentworth’s Fees were provided for without their assistance, Ibeg leave to make a small extract of his Letter to me which was laid before the Council on the17 lh Oct. 1766 and stands on the minutes of that day. It is as follows— That it had beat the 'practiceon granting Lands in JViW Hampshire to reserve to the Governor a Farm of five hundred acres in eachTownship , which is the only Perquisite in the Government. M r Wentworth afterwards desires that hisclaims in the Township of Brattlebororough and Rockingham might be secured to him in consid-eration of his improvements made there which was accordingly done but all the Reservations forhim which were uncultivated were declared revested in the Crown. I can make no doubt but atpresent it sufficiently appears that there was as little Foundation for asserting so barefaced a False-hood as that of having pay d so large a sum for their Charters as there w r as for saying that I had madeany demands on them. If there had been real claimants of the ninety six Townships and theyhad joined together in this Petition, the whole of their expence would not have amounted to 1600pounds although it would appear they claimed more than two million of acres, but this is very farfrom being the case, for 21 of these being indisputably within the former Limits of this Province