iends, even when
there were actual settlers already on the grants. In the case of New
England the land system is usually so described as to give the
impression that it was based on a non-commercial policy, creating new
Puritan towns by free grants of land made in advance to approved
settlers. This description does not completely fit the case. That there
was an economic interest on the part of absentee proprietors, and that
men of political influence with the government were often among the
grantees seems also to be true. Melville Egleston states the case thus:
"The court was careful not to authorize new plantations unless they were
to be in a measure under the influence of men in whom confidence could
be placed, and commonly acted upon their application."[55:1] The
frontier, as we shall observe later, was not always disposed to see the
practice in so favorable a light.

New towns seem to have been the result in some cases of the aggregation
of settlers upon and about a large private grant; more often they
resulted from settlers in older towns, where the town limits were
extensive, spreading out to the good lands of the outskirts, beyond easy
access to the meeting-house, and then asking recognition as a separate
town. In some cases they may have been due to squatting on unassigned
lands, or purchasing the Indian title and then asking confirmation. In
others grants were made in advance of settlement.

As early as 1636 the General Court had ordered that none go to new
plantations without leave of a majority of the magistrates.[55:2] This
made the legal situation clear, but it would be dangerous to conclude
that it represented the actual situation. In any case there would be a
necessity for the settlers finally to secure the assent of the Court.
This could be facilitated by a grant to leading men having political
influence with the magistrates. The complaints of absentee proprietors
which find expression in the frontier petitions of the seventeenth and
early eighteenth century seems to indicate that this happened. In the
succeeding years of the eighteenth century the grants to leading men and
the economic and political motives in the grants are increasingly
evident. This whole topic should be made the subject of special study.
What is here offered is merely suggestive of a problem.[56:1]

The frontier settlers criticized the absentee proprietors, who profited
by the pioneers' expenditure of labor and blood upon their farm