SIR FERDINANDO

See also:

• SIR FERDINANDO GORGES (c. 1566-1647)

GORGES (c. 1566-1647)  , English colonial pioneer in America and the founder of Maine, was born in Somersetshire, England, probably in 1566 . From youth both a soldier and a sailor, he was a prisoner in Spain at the age of twenty-one, having been captured by a ship of the Spanish Armada . In 1589 he was in command of a small body of troops fighting for Henry IV. of France, and after distinguishing him-self at the siege of Rouen was knighted there in 1591 . In 1596 he was commissioned captain and keeper of the castle and fort at Plymouth and captain of St Nicholas Isle; in 1597 he accompanied Essex on the expedition to the Azores; in 1599 assisted him in the attempt to suppress the Tyrone rebellion in Ireland, and in 1600 was implicated in Essex's own attempt at rebellion in London . In 1603, on the accession of James I., he was suspended from his post at Plymouth, but was restored in the same year and continued to serve as " governor of the forts and island of Plymouth" until 1629, when, his garrison having been without pay for three and a half years, his fort a ruin, and all his applications for aid having been ignored, he resigned . About 16o5 he began to be greatly interested in the New World; in 16o6 he became a member of the Plymouth Company, and he laboured zealously for the founding of the Popham colony at the mouth of the Sagadahoc (now the Kennebec) river in 1607 . For several years following the failure of that enterprise in 16o8 he continued to fit out ships for fishing, trading and exploring, with colonization as the chief end in view . He was largely instrumental in procuring the new charter of 162o for the Plymouth Company, and was at all times of its existence perhaps the most influential member of that body . He was the recipient, either solely or jointly, of several grants of territory from it, for one of which he received in 16J9 the royal charter of Maine (see MAINE) . In 1635 he sought to be appointed governor-general of all New England, but the English Civil War—in which he espoused the royal cause—prevented him from ever actually holding that office . A short time before his death at Long Ashton in 1647 he wrote his Briefe Narration of the Originall Undertakings of the Advancement of Plantations into the Parts of America . He was an advocate, especially late in life, of the feudal type of colony .

See J . P .

Baxter (ed.), Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his Province of Maine (3 vols., Boston, 189o; in the Prince Society Publications), the first volume of which is a memoir of Gorges, and the other volumes contain a reprint of the Briefe Narration, Gorges's letters, and other documentary material .