Robert Gorges, Governor-General of New England

Biography

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gorges

Robert Gorges (1595 – late 1620s) was a captain in the English navy and briefly Governor-General of New England from 1623 to 1624. He was the son of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. After serving in the Venetian wars, Gorges was given a commission as Governor-General of New England and emigrated to modern Weymouth, Massachusetts in 1623, building his settlement on the site of the failed Wessagusset Colony.

At the time of the founding of Gorges' settlement, the English explorer Capt. Francis West was named admiral of the Plymouth Council for New England to advise him, along with another English explorer and naval Captain, Christopher Levett, who was attempting a settlement at Portland, Maine, which also later failed.[2] Levett was named to advise Gorges as the governor of the Plymouth Colony.

The arrangement was not satisfactory. Apparently frustrated by the pace of settlement and an obdurate attitude of the new colonists towards English interference, Capt. Gorges returned to England in the spring of 1624. Several of his settlers turned up later at the house Levett had built on what is today House Island in Casco Bay, Maine. Gorges died sometime in the 1620s; his brother John had taken over the Gorges claims by 1629.

Notes

From http://www.pilgrimhallmuseum.org/pdf/The_signatories_Gorges.pdf

In 1623, Gorges sent his son Robert to Massachusetts Bay with a patent from the Council for New England that not only gave him control of the entire North Shore area but also gave him the magnificent title “general governor of the country.” Robert soon quarreled with Thomas Weston, who had settled at Wessagusset. William Bradford notes, with a touch of sly humor, that “The Governor [Robert Gorges] and some that depended upon him returned for England, having scarcely saluted the country in his government, not finding the state of things here to answer his quality and condition.”
Young Robert’s attitude, so subtlely mocked by Bradford, mirrored one of his father’s chief shortcomings.Gorges was never able to make the mental transition from a feudal and royalist viewpoint to the more democratic viewpoint necessary for a successful colonizing venture. He looked on settlements as aristocratic undertakings and expected them to be governed by the practices of feudalism. He even proposed on several occasions that settlers should be regarded as tenants, not as landholders, and that they should be tied to the land where they were “planted.” This was certainly not the spirit that encouraged families to emigrate to America. And it certainly was not the understanding of the Pilgrims. A letter written in 1621 by William Hilton, a passenger in the Fortune, specifically says “We are all freeholders; the rent-day doth not trouble us.”

References

• Adams, Charles Francis. "Three Episodes of Massachusetts History" Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston & New York, The Riverside Press, Cambridge. 1892. Vol. 1 see at Hathitrust
• Bradford, William. History of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, Vol. I, The Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass., 1912 page 327 - 328 GoogleBooks
• "Weymouth, Dorset, England - History & Heritage of Weymouth, Dorset & Area". 14 November 2008. Retrieved 26 November 2008. link
• Jack Dwyer: Dorset Pioneers: The History Press: 2009: ISBN 978-0-7524-5346-0
• Robert Gorges, The Great Migration Begins, Immigrants to New England, 1620–1633, New England Historic Genealogical Society, NewEnglandAncestors.org
• http://www.sonofthesouth.net/revolutionary-war/explorers/ferdinando...