[Tuxnes-devel] d thereto apperteyneing

[Jaeschke <lin...@ki...>]

 Lancaster. In 1650 John Prescott found himself the only member of the
company resident at Nashaway. Of the co-partners Symonds, King, and John
Hill were dead; Norcross and Child had gone to England; Cowdall had sold
his rights to Prescott; Chandler, Davis, Walker, and others had formally
abandoned their claims; Garrett, Shawe, 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 t