Thomas Mayhew - From Colony To Aristocracy

From Colony To Aristocracy

Through a maze of conflicting land grants, changing political allegiances, and settler unrest, Mayhew, who styled himself "Governour Mayhew", began to rule his island with an iron hand. The most serious threat to his control came in 1665 when Martha's Vineyard was included in the lands placed under the king's brother, the Duke of York. After much delay, a settlement, worked out in 1671, confirmed the Mayhew patent and named Mayhew "Governour and Chiefe Magistrate" for life. At the same time, a patent was issued erecting the Manor of Tisbury in the southwestern part of the island. The Governor and his grandson were made "joint Lords of the Manor of Tisbury," and the inhabitants became manorial tenants subject to the feudal jurisdiction of the Mayhews. This full-fledged feudal manor appears to have been the only such institution actually established in New England.

The attempt of the Mayhews to create a hereditary aristocracy on the Vineyard met with increasing opposition as more and more colonists arrived. When the Dutch temporarily recaptured New York in 1673, open rebellion broke out and this lasted until the English regained New York and restored the authority of the Mayhews on the island. The old patriarch died in 1682, at the age of eight-nine. Nine years later the political rule of his family ended when Martha's Vineyard was annexed by Massachusetts after the Glorious Revolution in England, but the manorial land tenure remained. Although some of the Mayhews clung to the "pleasant fiction" of their manorial rights almost until the American Revolution and received token quit rents as late as 1732, feudalism on Martha's Vineyard died the same slow, lingering but certain death it did elsewhere in the colonies.