And now we come to a most interesting point in connection with the earliest records of Boston. When Winthrop and his company landed in Charlestown in 1630, they found this William Blackstone already settled on the opposite peninsula in what is now Boston.[42] He had then been there some five or six years, but how he got there or from whence has always been a mystery. There he was, however. Now when John Gorges proposed to make over to Oldham his brother’s grant of land, he naturally would have sent his directions to those “servants,” “undertakers” or “tenants,” who had been left in possession of it by his brother. As a matter of fact he did send his instructions to Blackstone and Jeffries, and the last named then was living at Wessagusset, while both were within the limits of the patent. The inference is difficult to resist that both had belonged to the Gorges settlement,--that one had remained on its site, while the other had moved away about a year after Gorges left to a locality which pleased him better. That Jeffries was settled at Weymouth admits of no question, for when that place next appears in the authentic records of the time it is under a double name, both as Wessagusset and as Jeffries and Burslem’s plantation. The whole chain of connected evidence, therefore, not only tends to shew the continuing settlement of Weymouth after September, 1623, but it also establishes the strong presumption that Boston itself was first occupied by a straggling recluse from what is now called the village of Old Spain. * * * * *