Phelps, he was so good as to shew me his instructions and power of agency from the Doctor, which was as ample a power as could be to enable him to act with regard to the place of fixing the college, and the Doctor will now own that he verily thought the place was fixed, and your Excellency and the other Trustees living in New-Hampshire, then expressly gave in writing that it should not be placed below Haverhill or Orford, but it is evident that some of the craft, that has plagued the state this thousand years, has been used, or sure I am and so is every indifferent man, who is acquainted with Hanover, much mistaken; a town if they had water to grind for the few poor inhabitants who live there, they never did, and 'tis said by judicious men that for years to come, they will not be able to raise their own bread.-I would therefore in behalf of the public, humbly pray your Excellency by yourself or by an indifferent committee, to review or rather view Hanover and its circumstances, for the Doctor and his attendant did not view it, that in justice to your Excellency, to the Province, and the College, it would be placed further up the river, in justice to your Excellency, as the eye of the public is to you, your honor must suffer, as it must be judged ill-placed. In justice to the province, as certain it is that the trade from Hanover will never be to Portsmouth but to Newbury. But from Haverhill or Orford the trade will be to Portsmouth. Further, numbers in the province in which I live, as well as in Connecticut, as I hear, who proposed to remove and settle near the College, expecting the College would have been placed in a good town, are, as the case now stands, determined not to move into the province. Your Excellency has the best right, as every one judges, to determine that matter, and as the Doctor has once passed by his engagement, in point of fixing it, your Excellency's honor

can't be exposed in reviewing the matter.--Surely the extraordinary cost must be great to build and support a College in a town where boards cannot be sawed and bread raised. I beg your Excellency's pardon for this trouble; a number of the judicious urged me to write, and as a word is sufficient, I am your Excellency's most humble Servant, July 19, 1770. PUBLICUS.

Province of Massachusetts Bay. In the House of Representatives, May 26, 1774. Resolved, that the Committee of Correspondence be, and they hereby are, directed to write to the Committees of Correspondence of all the British colonies on this continent, inclosing a copy of an unprecedented act of the British Parliament for shutting up the port of Boston and otherwise punishing the inhabitants of that town: and desire their immediate attention to an act designed to suppress the spirit of liberty in America.

A true copy, Attest,

SAM'L ADAMS, Clerk.

Province of Massachusetts Bay,

GENTLEMEN,

May 28, 1774.

By order of the House of Representatives of this Province, we enclose you an act passed in the late session of the British Parliament, entitled "an act to discontinue in such manner and for such time as are therein mentioned, the landing and discharging, lading or shipping of goods,

wares, and merchandize at the town and within the harbor of Boston, in the province of Massachusetts Bay, in North America."

We think, the archives of Constantinople might be in vain searched for a parallel.-To reason upon such an act would be idleness. You will, doubtless, judge every American Colony deeply concerned in it, and contemplate and determine upon it accordingly.

We are, with great regard, your friends and Fellow Countrymen,

To the Gentlemen of the Committee of correspondence, appointed by the House of Representatives of the Province of New-Hampshire.*

Gentlemen,

Boston, June 4, 1774.

We take the earliest opportunities to enclose you copies of two bills brought into Parliament, and before this time probably enacted, which we have but just received by a vessel in thirty six days from Bristol. It is also confidently reported, that a third bill is to be brought into Parliament for the better regulating the government of the other provinces in North America. These edicts, cruel and oppressive as they are, we consider as but bare specimens of what the continent are to expect from a Parliament, who claim

*This Committee of Correspondence was appointed by the House of RepresentaLives at a meeting of the Assembly, 10 May, 1774.-Records.

a right to make laws binding us in all cases what

soever.

We are your friends and

Fellow Countrymen,

THOMAS CUSHING,

Committee of

SAMUEL ADAMS,

Correspondence.

JOSEPH HAWLEY,

THOMAS GARDner,

To the Gentlemen, the Committee of Correspondence, appointed by the House of Representatives of the Colony of New-Hampshire.

Gentlemen,

Somersworth, June 11th, 1774.

Your favors of the 28th ult. and 4th instant, made their journey from Portsmouth here so slowly as not to arrive before the 9th instant--after I had seen the tremendous act and pending bills which they covered.

I enclose you a vote of the late assembly, which with the aid of one (not by me) for a committee to correspond with our sister colonies, I apprehend produced a dissolution of them and their committee at a stroke on the 8th instant. This measure,

I conceive, took its rise from ministerial influence, by express instructions to our amiable governor ; similar to which, I suspect, reach all of his order on the continent.

A rivetted opinion of the good and gracious intentions of our lawful sovereign, constrains me to believe that to reinstate in his royal favour, he needs only be divested of the unfavorable impressions of America's inveterate foes, whose secret machinations evidently tend to disunite what when disunited will be no longer powerful.

The sons of freedom in New-Hampshire, I believe, sympathise with your metropolis in its present distress.So mighty a display of ministerial vengeance can be accounted for only from your noble efforts to stem the torrent of oppression. Any notices on the present critical situation of America which you shall please to favor me with (whether I am or am not a member of the next assembly,) shall be acknowledged and faithfully communicated by, Gentlemen,

Your Friend and Countryman,

JOHN WENTWORTH.*

To the Gentlemen, the Committee, &c. Massachusetts.

Sketch of Capt. John Pickering, Portsmouth.

Among the early inhabitants of Portsmouth, was JOHN PICKERING, whom we find there as early as 1636. He went thither from Massachusetts, but whether he was the one who resided at Cambridge, soon after the settlement of that town, we have not ascertained. He is named among those inhabitants of Portsmouth, who, in 1640, made a grant of fifty acres for a glebe for the use of the ministry of that town. He died, as appears from a record in the Secretary's office, 18 January, 1668-9. He left two sons, John and Thomas, both of whom lived in Portsmouth in

* Mr. Wentworth was at this time Speaker of the Assembly. He had been in that office the three preceding years. He was father of Hon. John Wentworth, a lawyer, who graduated at Harvard College in 1768, and was one of the delegates from this state to the old Congress, and who died in the midst of his usefulness at the age of 42, leaving four sons, John, Joseph, Meshech-Weare and Paul.

+ Belknap, i. 28, 29. Adams, Annals of Portsmouth, 26, 394, 395,