zaffre
fdril
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Pronouns
- he/him
Some more sacred codtent: you may know that Plymouth, as with most of the early British colonies, was set up as a joint-stock company and, as with most of the early joint-stock companies, failed miserably and was disbanded in 1635, with the result being that Plymouth was able to somewhat ambiguously govern itself without a formal charter as a Puritan theocracy for several decades until it was bundled into Massachusetts.
But what you do not know (did anyone know the other bit) is that this only emerged as a stop-gap after the original plan - a partition of everything between "Virginia" and "Nova Scotia" into eight proprietary colonies - spontaneously fell through. To wit: it is February 3rd, 1635. You are the Plymouth Council of New England, a group oflords who don't have anything better to do legitimate businessmen who are understandably frustrated that New England is turning into one giant boondoggle that is too busy doing things like cut the St. George's Cross (popish) out of flags and avoid starvation to provide any return on investment. So what do you do? Pizza time. Slice the whole region into eight separate patents, to be granted to different members of the Council and all administered by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, with the goal being to override the awkward failures of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. And as far as lines on a map go:
Some sources cite as many twelve patents here (and come up with borders) but having dug all the way to the actual text of it, yeah, eight. The only ones that even *vaguely* stuck were Ferdinando Gorges' "New Somersetshire" as an antecedent to Maine and John Mason's New Hampshire (with different borders, mind you) although Hamilton's heirs did contest "New Cambridge" and piss off Connecticut several decades later and Lord Alexander's "Canada" and "Isle of Sterling" (Long Island, which he also got for some reason) at least have names. I couldn't even come with that much for the other four.
So what happened? The original charter *was* surrendered, Ferdinando Gorges was appointed Governor General of New England and Mason Vice Admiral, a writ of quo warranto (what warrant) was decided against Massachusetts, and the Council somehow assembled the funds for a ship to bring Gorges, his household, and a thousand (!) soldiers over to the New World to that end. And then when they were launching the ship it broke. Mason died, unrelatedly, Charles and Archbishop Laud were starting to become distracted by, er, matters at home, and between one thing and another it all sputtered out and left Plymouth in a useful legal limbo for the next five decades.
But beyond hipster placenames and interesting borders - if that ship had sailed, the shit would absolutely have hit the fan. Ferdinando Gorges landing in Boston with a thousand soldiers to personally administer an Anglican proprietary colony is going to be an existential threat to the Puritans beyond even, well, Edmund Andros. And they have an window that by Andros' time had closed - not resistance, or revolution, but emigration: New Netherland is religiously tolerant and right there. This is already a period when settlers are moving westward per religious disputes en masse, and under the circumstances I think a reflection of the Pilgrims' original flight to Leiden would have been more than plausible, maybe even likely. But what about the English Civil War, you ask? That speeds up the migration, with an active Royalist governor who lives until 1647 and an establishment that holds onto power until 1652. You might see some settlement between then and the Restoration (yes, butterflies, but I think you need a pretty airtight POD for the Stuarts to stay in exile forever and ever) but at this point the Hudson and Connecticut valleys are the premiere destination of most religious migrants while Gorges has inadvertently condemned his patents to being cold, feudal backwaters, and with the balance of population so decisively changed I suspect it is (puritan-flavored) New Netherland that swallows New England rather than the other way around.
So yes, this is actually that darkest of timelines - a New Yorkwank.
What happens next?
But what you do not know (did anyone know the other bit) is that this only emerged as a stop-gap after the original plan - a partition of everything between "Virginia" and "Nova Scotia" into eight proprietary colonies - spontaneously fell through. To wit: it is February 3rd, 1635. You are the Plymouth Council of New England, a group of
Some sources cite as many twelve patents here (and come up with borders) but having dug all the way to the actual text of it, yeah, eight. The only ones that even *vaguely* stuck were Ferdinando Gorges' "New Somersetshire" as an antecedent to Maine and John Mason's New Hampshire (with different borders, mind you) although Hamilton's heirs did contest "New Cambridge" and piss off Connecticut several decades later and Lord Alexander's "Canada" and "Isle of Sterling" (Long Island, which he also got for some reason) at least have names. I couldn't even come with that much for the other four.
So what happened? The original charter *was* surrendered, Ferdinando Gorges was appointed Governor General of New England and Mason Vice Admiral, a writ of quo warranto (what warrant) was decided against Massachusetts, and the Council somehow assembled the funds for a ship to bring Gorges, his household, and a thousand (!) soldiers over to the New World to that end. And then when they were launching the ship it broke. Mason died, unrelatedly, Charles and Archbishop Laud were starting to become distracted by, er, matters at home, and between one thing and another it all sputtered out and left Plymouth in a useful legal limbo for the next five decades.
But beyond hipster placenames and interesting borders - if that ship had sailed, the shit would absolutely have hit the fan. Ferdinando Gorges landing in Boston with a thousand soldiers to personally administer an Anglican proprietary colony is going to be an existential threat to the Puritans beyond even, well, Edmund Andros. And they have an window that by Andros' time had closed - not resistance, or revolution, but emigration: New Netherland is religiously tolerant and right there. This is already a period when settlers are moving westward per religious disputes en masse, and under the circumstances I think a reflection of the Pilgrims' original flight to Leiden would have been more than plausible, maybe even likely. But what about the English Civil War, you ask? That speeds up the migration, with an active Royalist governor who lives until 1647 and an establishment that holds onto power until 1652. You might see some settlement between then and the Restoration (yes, butterflies, but I think you need a pretty airtight POD for the Stuarts to stay in exile forever and ever) but at this point the Hudson and Connecticut valleys are the premiere destination of most religious migrants while Gorges has inadvertently condemned his patents to being cold, feudal backwaters, and with the balance of population so decisively changed I suspect it is (puritan-flavored) New Netherland that swallows New England rather than the other way around.
So yes, this is actually that darkest of timelines - a New Yorkwank.
What happens next?