No sooner had Gorges passed away than Edward Rigby claimed the whole of Maine under a grant from the New England Company. Against this the heirs of Sir Ferdinando put in a strong counter-claim; the decision between the disputants was left to the authorities in Massachusetts, who divided the towns into equal halves, three being allotted to Rigby, and three to the Gorges claimant. The inhabitants of the colony were not consulted, and in 1649 they took the matter into their own hands and declared themselves a body politic with an elective governor and council. But this was not to last. In the early days of the settlement the colonists showed no signs of religious bigotry or of any religious views at all, but gradually they came to sympathise with both the religion and the political opinions of Massachusetts, so that between 1651 and 1658 the townships of Maine readily accepted the authority of the greater colony. Soon after the Restoration, Ferdinando Gorges, the grandson of the original patentee, sought to assert his authority over Maine, but his exertions were not supported by the Crown, and he was unsuccessful. In 1665 the home authorities set up a provisional government in the colony, but concerning its history very little is known. According to the Commissioners of that year the inhabitants themselves petitioned that they might continue under his Majesty's immediate government. They expressed their gratitude to Charles II. for his "fatherly care of them after so long a death inflicted on their minds and fortunes by the usurpation of the Massachusetts power,"[160] and they ask that the insults of others towards them may be prevented for the future by the appointment of Sir Robert Carr as their governor. But this statement seems very improbable and can hardly have expressed the general wishes of the people.