The two hundred and fifty-first year of the consecutive settlement of Weymouth will, therefore, as I conceive, be completed during the month of September next; nor can I find any sufficient authority for the generally accepted statement that an additional body of settlers arrived during the year 1624, from the town of the same name in England, having with them the Rev. Mr. Barnard, who died here after a ministration of eleven years.[43] With the departure of Captain Robert Gorges the Wessagusset settlement practically vanishes from the page of cotemporary history, only to re-appear again four years later in connection with a very famous incident. By one authority only during the intervening time do I find its name mentioned. Mr. Thomas Morton of Merry Mount, he of cobbler atonement memory, refers to it as a place to which he had recourse in winter “to have the benefit of company”;[44] and he seems to have been upon tolerably familiar terms with those living there, as several years after he wrote to William Jeffries, addressing him as “My very good gossip.”[45] These visits of Morton were made between the years 1625 and 1628. Once only does he refer to the place in connection with any clergyman, and then it is with one notorious enough in the early annals, but of a different stripe from what the Rev. Mr. Barnard is supposed to have been.[46] With this single exception, Wessagusset, between 1623 and 1628, is referred to by the chroniclers of the day only as included in several weak and scattered plantations. In 1628, however, it again asserted an existence. It happened in this wise. The year after Captain Robert Gorges had retired in disgust, a certain Captain Wollaston had made his appearance in Boston Bay, in company with several associates, bringing with him a party of hired people with a view to establishing a permanent trading post. He selected, as best adapted for his purpose, the rising ground over against Wessagusset to the north, which in his honor was called Mount Wollaston, the name by which it has ever since been known. This spot had some time previously been the home of Chicatabot, the greatest sagamore of the neighborhood, by whom it had been cleared of trees.[47] He, however, had abandoned it some eight years before, at the time of the great plague. Then, as now, that portion of the bay was very shallow, so that ships could not ride near the shore, nor boats approach it when the tide was out. There was, however, an abundance of beaver in the vicinity, and here Wollaston’s party established itself. After a brief trial, however, Wollaston himself seems to have liked the prospect no better than Captain Gorges, for he departed for Virginia with a portion of his company, leaving the remainder behind in charge of a Mr. Rassdall, one of his partners. Presently he summoned Rassdall to follow him with yet others of the party, and one Mr. Fitcher was left in command of the remainder. Among these was Mr. Thomas Morton. This individual had a