colonel of a regiment, senator in the Massachusetts Legislature, and one of the founders of the Massachusetts General Hospital. He died in 1821. All of Sir William's brothers were loyalists and were forced to leave the country, and their vast domains passed into other hands. A life interest or dower right in the Saco lands was enjoyed by Lady Mary Pepperell, the widow of the first Sir William and her daughter, Mrs. Sparhawk, which was devised to them by the Baronet's will. In exchange for the right thus arising, the State afterwards assigned two-ninths in absolute property to Lady Pepperell and her daughter, by a deed executed in 1788. This small portion of this great estate was saved through these ladies residing in the country during the war, the "sons of despotism" could hardly tar and feather two defenceless women, or drive them forth as they did their sons and brothers, and make absentees or refugees of them. Thus the princely fortune of Pepperell, that required a century to construct, from the foundation laid by John Bray the shipwright to the massive structure raised by the fisherman William Pepperell and completed by his son Sir William, fastened and secured though it was, by every instrument that his own skill and the best legal counsel could devise to give stability and perpetuity, was in a brief hour overthrown, and demolished by the confiscation act of 1778. So complete was the wreck that two of his daughter's grandsons, were saved from the almshouse by the bounty of some persons on whom they had no claim for favor. Never before in the history of this country has there been a more conspicuous fall of a family from a high estate. There has always been a doubt as to the legality of the Confiscation Act, as far as the remainder or reversionary interest, of the first Sir William was concerned, since it is apparently clear that the life-interest of the second Sir William could only be, or by the statute actually was, diverted and passed to the State.[168]