GORGES, SIR FERDINAND°, lord of the province of Maine; b. in Somersetshire, England, at a date unknown, d. at an advanced age in 1647. He was engaged in the conspiracy led by the earl of Essex, against whom lie was a witness in the trial of 1601. After serving for a time in the English navy, he was in 1604 appointed governor of Plymouth. Becoming deeply interested in the settlement of the new world, he resolved to become a proprietor of some part of its territory. Popham, the lord chief-justice of England, was persuaded to join him. In 1606 the king incorporated the London and Plymouth colonies, dividing between them the American territory, extending 50 m.'inland from the 34th to the 45th parallel n. latitude_ The Plymouth colony had the northern half, under the name of Northern Virginia. On May 31, 1607, three ships with 100 emigrants sailed from Plymouth, England. They landed at the mouth of the Kennebec, Maine, where they began a settlement, which, however, they were soon obliged to abandon. Capt. John Smith, as agent for Gorges, made several unsuccessful attempts to establish other settlements; but in 1616 Gorges sent out a small party which encamped for the winter on the river Saco. In 1620 Gorges and his associates obtained a new charter for the " Governing of New England in America," which gave them title to the territory extending westward from the Atlantic to the Pacific, between the 40th and 48th parallels n. latitude. Gorges and John Mason took grants of the district called Laconia; lying between the- MetrimaCk and the Kenne bec, and extending from the Atlantic to the "river of Canada," and under the auspices of the former, several settlements were made. In 1623 rapt. Robert Gorges. son of
Ferdinando, was appointed by vote of the council for New England, "general governor of the country." Twelve years later, however, the council resigned the charter to the king, the elder Gorges expecting to be thereupon appointed governor general. Disap pointed in this, he induced the king to grant him a charter constituting him lord pro prietary of the province of Maine, and providing that his office should remain hereditary in his family. His son Thomas was sent out as deputy governor. The principal settlements were Agamenticus and Saco, the former being the place now called York, and which was chartered as a city in 1642 under the name of Gorgeana. In 1643 the four New Engbald colonies formed an alliance for mutual defense, excluding therefrom the Gorges settlements, because, as Winthrop says, " They ran a different course from us both in their ministry and civil administration," and furthermore because the "lord proprietary of the province of Maine" was then fighting in England for the king against the cause of the Puritans. After the death of Gorges the settlements established by him formed themselves into a body politic and submitted to the of Massachu setts. His.grandson, Ferdinaudo, born in 1629, received from Massachusetts the sum of L'1,250 for relinquishing his rights as an heir to the province of Maine. This grand son was the author of Amertca Painted to the Lift, published in London in 1659.