After various trials in the courts of law in all possible shapes, the whole subject was carried up to the General Court, where it was decided, in conformity with the report of a special commission in May, 1679, substantially in favor of Putnam and Allen. Endicott petitioned for a new hearing. Another commission was appointed; and their report was accepted in May, 1682. It was more unfavorable to Endicott than the previous one. He protested against the judgment of the court in earnest but respectful language, and petitioned for still another hearing. They again complied with his request, and appointed a day for once more examining the case; but, when the day came, Nov. 24, 1683, he was sick in bed, and the case was settled irrevocably against him. The map gives the lines of the Bishop farm as finally settled by the General Court. It will be noticed, that it is laid directly across the Governor's Plain, and runs far into the Orchard Farm "up to the rocks[i.88] near Endicott's dwelling-house," or, as it is otherwise stated, "within a few rods of Guppy's ditch, near to" the said house. It may be said to have been a necessity, as the original three hundred acres of the grant to Townsend Bishop had to be made up. It could not go north; for Houlton and Ingersol stood upon the Weston grant, and Hutchinson and Nathaniel Putnam stood upon Stileman's grants, to push it back. It could not go west or south-west, for there Swinnerton stood to fend off upon his grants; and there, too, was Nathaniel Putnam, upon his own grant, and lands he had purchased of another original grantee. It could not be swung round to the south without jamming up the lands of Felton and others, or pushing them over the grants, made to Robert Cole—under which Downing had purchased—and to Thomas Read. All these parties were combined to force it south-eastwardly over the grounds of Endicott. Nathaniel Putnam was his most fatal antagonist. He was a man of remarkable energy, of consummate adroitness, and untiring resources in such a transaction; and he so managed to press in the bounds of the Bishop farm, at the north-east, as to gain a valuable strip for himself. With this strong man against him, acting in combination with the rich and influential James Allen, minister of the great metropolitan First Church, and licenser of the press, who brought the whole power of his clerical and social connections in Boston and throughout the colony to bear upon the General Court, Zerubabel Endicott had no chance for justice, and no redress for[i.89] wrong. In vain he invoked the memory of his father, or of Winthrop, the grandfather of his wife. His father and both the Winthrops had long before left the scene: a new generation had risen, and there was none to help him.