# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mason, John (1586-1635)

​MASON, JOHN (1586–1635), founder of New Hampshire, only son of John and Isabella Mason (born Steed), was born at King's Lynn, and was baptised in St. Margaret's Church in that town on 11 Dec. 1586. He matriculated from Magdalen College, Oxford, as ‘of Southants, pleb.,’ on 25 June 1602 (Foster, Alumni Oxon. 1500–1714). He is said to have obtained a place in a commercial house in London, and had probably conducted successful voyages prior to 1610, when he was appointed by James I to the command of two ships of war and two pinnaces, despatched to assist Andrew Knox [q. v.] in his reclamation of the Hebrides. While Mason was engaged upon this service the first English plantation of Newfoundland was effected under John Guy of Bristol. Guy resigned the governorship in 1615, and partly, it would appear, by way of compensation for disbursements made on his Scottish expedition, Mason was appointed in his place. The new governor at once set about a thorough exploration of the island. Writing to a friend and patron, Sir John Scott of Scotstarvet, ‘from the plantacion of Cuper's Cove in Terra Nova ult. Augusti 1617,’ he expresses his intention to construct a map with a particular relation of the several parts, natures, and qualities of the country. His map was completed in 1625, and prefixed to Sir William Vaughan's ‘Golden Fleece’ (‘Cambrensium Caroleia,’ London, 1625). To this rare little work Mason, like his predecessor Guy, also contributed some complimentary Latin verse. There are some earlier maps of Terra Nova by foreign hands (one having been found in the Vatican, dated 1556), but Mason's is the first English map, and the earliest representation of the configuration of the coast (cf. Howley, Eccles. Hist. of Newfoundland; Winsor, Hist. of America, viii. 190). In 1620 he despatched to his former correspondent ‘A Briefe Discovrse of the Newfoundland, with the situation, temperature, and commodities thereof, inciting our Nation to goe forward in that hopefull plantation begunne.’ This extremely rare work (of which no copy is believed to exist in America, and three only in England, one in the British Museum) was printed by Andro Hart, Edinburgh, 1620 (seven leaves, no pagination). ‘Unpolished and rude, bearing the countries badge where it was patched,’ Mason's tract was mainly designed to interest the Scots in settling a colony in Newfoundland. It describes the climate, the products of the earth, the growth of European vegetables, and the greatness of the fishing interest. In the spring of 1621 Mason returned to England; he was at once in request, being consulted by Sir William Alexander [q. v.] (afterwards Earl of Stirling) about the proposed settlement of Nova Scotia, and conferring with Sir Ferdinando Gorges [q. v.], treasurer of the council for New England, with respect to the systematic planting of the province of Maine (Gorges, Description of New England, Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. 3rd ser. vi. 78). A patent for all the land lying between the Nahumheik and Merrimack rivers was granted to Mason by the council on 9 March 1621–2. Another grant was made him jointly with Gorges in August. He appears to have sailed in the following year in the capacity of deputy-governor, and built a stone house at New Plymouth. In 1624, however, he returned to England in the expectation of finding employment in the war with Spain, and took up his abode with his family at Portsmouth, in the house in which a few years afterwards Buckingham was assassinated by Felton. In 1626 he was appointed by Buckingham commissary general for victualling the Cadiz expedition (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 25 May 1626), though he was described by Lord Wimbledon as deserving a better office. In the following year he was accordingly appointed treasurer and paymaster of the English army (ib. 16 May 1627). His letters in this capacity show him to have been active, capable, and not afraid of telling his superiors unpalatable truths (ib. 19 Jan., 7 May, &c.). On the establishment of peace in 1629 Mason set out once more for New England, with patents for lands on the Iroquois lakes. He, Gorges, and seven other traders were associated under the name of the Laconia (Lake Country) Company, with the intention of forming a permanent agricultural settlement. An agent of Mason's brought over one hundred Danish oxen, and among other articles imported was a set of church furniture, Mason being a zealous Anglican, in consequence of which he has been persistently ignored or reviled by the puritan historians of New England. In 1631 Gorges and Mason ‘joined with them 6 merchants in London,’ and received from the council a new grant, dated 3 Nov., ​of a tract of land on the Piscataqua river. The association infused new life, both into the original colony and into the previous settlements on the Piscataqua, which became known henceforth by the name of New Hampshire. There was a constant influx of new settlers who cleared the land and built permanent houses.
Mason returned to England early in 1634, and was appointed by the government captain of Southsea Castle, and inspector of the forts and castles on the south coast. He had in the previous year been appointed on the council for New England, which frequently met at his house in Fenchurch Street (Colonial Corresp. 4 Nov. 1631, p. 15). He was also appointed treasurer of the ‘Association of the Three Kingdoms for a General Fishery’ (1633), and on 1 Oct. 1635 he was honoured by his nomination as first ‘vice-admiral of New England’ under Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Before, however, he could revisit the plantations, he was taken ill and died early in December 1635. The death of so energetic a churchman and royalist was regarded as a divine favour by the puritans of Massachusetts Bay. By his will, dated 26 Nov. and proved on 22 Dec. 1635, he left one thousand acres of land towards the maintenance of a church, and another thousand acres for that of a school in New Hampshire. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. A brass monument was erected to his memory in the church of the Domus Dei at Portsmouth by some residents in New Hampshire (including some of Mason's own descendants) in 1874.
Mason was married on 29 Oct. 1606 to Anne, second daughter of Edward Greene (d. 1619) of London, goldsmith, by whom he left one daughter, Anne, who married Joseph Tufton of Betchworth, Surrey. Robert Hayman in his ‘Quodlibets’ (1628, p. 31) addressed verses to ‘the worshipfull Captaine, John Mason’ and to ‘the modest and discreet gentlewoman Mistress Mason.’ Mason's widow died in 1655.
Mason's rights in New Hampshire were sold to Governor Samuel Allen in 1691, and proved a fruitful source of litigation to that official and his heirs; in January 1746 John Tufton Mason, a descendant, disposed of his rights for 1,500l. to twelve gentlemen of Portsmouth, henceforth called the ‘Masonian Proprietors’ (cf. C. L. Woodbury, Old Planter in New England, 1885).
[Captain John Mason, the Founder of New Hampshire, a memoir by C. W. Tuttle in J. W. Dean's edition of Mason's tract, together with illustrative historical documents, for the Prince Soc. Boston, 1887; cf. Doyle's English in America, Puritan Colonies, i. 196, 277. &c.; Brown's Genesis of the United States, ii. 945; Cal. State Papers, Colonial (Amer. and West Indies, 1574–1660), pp. 25, 138, 153, 157, 204, 210, 214, 246, 293, 402; Belknap's History of New Hampshire, 1831, i. 3, 4, 8, 9, 14, 15; New Hampshire Documents, ed. J. S. Jenness, i. 45, 54, 55, &c.; Waters's Chesters of Chicheley, ii. 549; Purchas his Pilgrimes, 1625, iv. 1876–91; Notes and Queries, 4th ser. vii. 265; Mason's Discourse, reprinted in the Bannatyne Club's Royal Letters, Charters, and Tracts relating to the Colonisation of New Scotland, 1867.]
T. S.