This fact I endeavored to establish, and fix in our Massachusetts history; and, moreover, the fact has singular historical interest. It was a struggle for possession between two forms of civilization and of religious faith. The Gorges settlement was ecclesiastical and feudal; that led by Winthrop was theological and democratic: that is, both as respects church and state, the Gorges attempt at Wessagusset was the antithesis, the direct opposite, to the Winthrop accomplishment at Shawmut. Moreover, the fate of the two settlements during the earlier and crucial period depended not on events in Massachusetts, but upon a struggle for supremacy going on in England. Gorges represented Charles I; Winthrop, the Parliament. If the fortune of war had turned otherwise than it did turn, and Charles I had emerged from the conflict victorious, there can be little question Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and not John Winthrop, would have shaped the destiny of Massachusetts. Its history would then have been wholly other than it was. In discussing the developments of the past,--the sequence of history,--it is never worth while to philosophize over what might have been, had something, which did not happen, chanced to happen at the crucial moment. What did occur, actually occurred; and not something else. None the less, so far as Weymouth is concerned, the forgotten story of that abortive Gorges attempt at a feudal pre-emption, is history; and, moreover, it is an extremely suggestive bit of history. At one time, the chances seemed to preponderate in favor of Gorges, and against Winthrop. First on the ground, the Gorges settlement represented prerogative at a period when king and primate had it all their own way. The permanence of the Puritan colony was thus for a time at stake; and, indeed, it was years before the Gorges claims ceased to occasion anxiety in the Boston council chamber. More than once a royal intervention, from which there was no apparent avenue of escape, seemed imminent. The single possible recourse was to a policy of delay, of procrastination; and, while pursuing it, those entrusted with the fate of the infant commonwealth watched in fear and trembling the slow course of English events, as they unfolded themselves towards a doubtful end. Time, and the chances of war on the other side of the Atlantic, at last dispelled danger; but the Wessagusset settlement, prior in time, long made itself sensibly felt as a disturbing factor in Massachusetts development. And now, looking back on the celebration held here in 1874, and my own contribution to it, I think I may fairly claim that form and substance were at that time and there given to a chapter of history then altogether forgotten; but, when revived, not devoid of interest, because explanatory of much, before mysterious.