C. W. Tuttle, _Captain John Mason_; Prince Society, Boston, 1887. The will and notes are on pp. 391-408. Footnote 440: _New Hampshire Provincial Papers_, vol. I, pp. 131 _f._ The Indian deed, formerly thought to have been obtained by Wheelwright for the land, is now generally considered spurious. _Ibid._, pp. 136 _f._ _Cf._, however, Bell (_John Wheelwright_, pp. 79 _ff._), who contends that it was genuine. Footnote 441: J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 350. One of these northern towns, from its first settlement, had been considered by Massachusetts as under its own jurisdiction. In March, 1637, the General Court had ordered that a plantation should be started at Wenicunnett,—the name being later changed to Hampton,—a little more than three miles north of the Merrimac.[442] It was thus slightly outside of the bounds of the patent, if that were construed, as it had been construed to that time, to include only such land north of the river as lay within three miles of it.[443] The project may mark, however, the first tentative step toward the colony's later, and wholly unwarranted, interpretation of that instrument, so as to include all the territory lying south of a line drawn due east from a point three miles north of the most northerly part of that stream, to the ocean, thus including practically all of New Hampshire and a large part of Maine. About a year and a half after the “bound house” was built, a group of colonists went to take possession of the new site. The Exeter men at once objected to this encroachment of Massachusetts on their neighborhood; but the General Court replied that the new settlement was within their patent, and that they looked upon the protest as “against good neighborhood, religion and common honesty.” They did, however, quietly send out a surveying party, and having found that the part above Pennacook was north of the line of 43½ degrees, they phrased a new answer to Exeter's renewed protest, saying that, while they relinquished none of their rights, nevertheless, as the Exeter men did not profess to claim anything which might fall within the Massachusetts patent, the matter would be allowed to rest. The way was thus left open for future aggression, and the Court immediately proceeded to erect the new settlement into a legal town.[444] Footnote 442: _Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 167, 271; J. Dow, _History of Town of Hampton_ (Salem, 1893), vol I, pp. 7 _f._ Footnote 443: It is noteworthy that in 1633, in a letter to Secretary Coke, Emanuel Downing asked that the charter limits be extended a little to the north, where were the best firs and timber. _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1675-76_, p. 74. Footnote 444: J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, pp. 349, 365; _Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 259.