The second question is—when was Plymouth incorporated. The direct answer to this question, that Plymouth was never incorporated, would be very unsatisfactory without some explanation of the relations existing between the Colony and the town of Plymouth. It is all very well to speak of the settlement of the town instead of its incorporation, and fix the date at 1620, but the precise time, when the line was drawn between the colony and town, and when the town was clothed by official authority with the functions of a municipality, it is impossible to fix. In the records of 1626 Plymouth is called a plantation; in a deed dated, 1631, from John to Edward Winslow, the town of Plymouth is referred to; in accordance with the law passed by the General Court requiring towns to choose constables, one was chosen in Plymouth in 1633; and in 1638 at a meeting held for the purpose of considering the disposition of the gift of stock by James Sherley of London for the benefit of the poor of the town, it was decided “that the town should be considered as extending from the lands of Wm. Pontus and John Dunham (now the lands of Thomas O. Jackson) on the south, to the outside of New street (now North street) on the north. Finally in the year 1637 the first entry in the town records was made, and on the second day of November, 1640, it was ordered at a meeting of the Court of Assistants that “whereas by the Act of the General Court held the third of March in the sixteenth year of his Majesties now reign, the Governor and Assistants were authorized to set the bounds of the several townships, it is enacted and concluded by the Court that the bounds of Plymouth township shall extend southwards to the bounds of Sandwich township, and northward to the little brook falling into Black Water from the commons left to Duxbury, and the neighborhood thereabouts, and westward eight miles up into the lands from any part of the bay or sea; always provided that the bounds shall extend so far up into the woodlands as to include the South Meadows toward Agawam, lately discovered, and the convenient uplands thereabouts.” But notwithstanding all these references, it is enough to say that Plymouth was settled in 1620, but never formally incorporated.