Early in 1641, a dispute between church factions in Dover, headed by two contending clergymen, gave Massachusetts a chance to intervene. Captain Underhill, who had been banished from that colony at the time of the Hutchinson controversy, was then on the Piscataqua, and, perhaps with an idea of once more ingratiating himself with the home authorities, sent a petition to the Massachusetts Court, asking aid for himself and his party. Massachusetts at once dispatched a magistrate and two clergymen, and the Underhill party were victorious, the clergyman heading the opposing faction having opportunely turned out to be a personally immoral character.[525] The Dover patentees, Warwick, Say, and the others, who had purchased the patent in the interests of Massachusetts some years before, now passed the grant, with slight reservations, to that colony, which at once annexed the town.[526] A temporary government was installed, and, two years later, it was agreed that the inhabitants should have the privilege of freemen to manage their local affairs, and to elect deputies, even though they were not church members.[527] Thus a right not yielded to four fifths of her own citizens was granted to those in her new possessions, and imperial ambition seems to have won the first victory over Israelitish polity. This provision not only disproved her former claim that civil order could not be maintained without forced religious conformity, but, combined with the further provision that the settlers in the newly annexed territory should be subject only to local, and not to general, taxation, it tended to show that she herself did not believe the claims she made as to the interpretation of the charter.[528] If she really considered that the territory now being seized under pretext of ownership was as indubitably hers as that south of the Merrimack, why did she thus deprive herself of the right of religious and fiscal control? Footnote 525: J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, pp. 33 _f._ Footnote 526: _Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, p. 332; J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. II, p. 50. Apparently Strawberry Bank (Portsmouth) was also annexed. _Cf._ _New Hampshire Provincial Papers_, vol. I, p. 192. Footnote 527: _Ibid._, pp. 183 _ff._, 168. Footnote 528: _New Hampshire Provincial Papers_, vol. I, pp. 182, 184. She next claimed and absorbed the town of Exeter, and her new claims, extending to Maine, there came into conflict with those of Gorges and the Pilgrims. The latter, indeed, had lately heard her state that she was entitled to a part of the town of Plymouth itself, and she did encroach upon the Plymouth territory.[529] A further enlargement of her power to the south, and one obviously outside her jurisdiction, was next made within the present limits of Rhode Island. Footnote 529: Bradford, _Plymouth_, pp. 367 _ff._