Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 12.pdf/92

 Lincoln (Maine) Bar.

LINCOLN (MAINE) BAR.

ITS COLONIAL ROOTLETS 1607, AND CLIMAX 1899. BY R. K. SKWALL. IN English jurisprudence the bar repre sents a conception and contrivance in the administration of law, founded on the Roman idea of a tribunal of justice. The bar is a factor of our civilization. It is, in fact, a duly organized body of men, schooled and skilled in the principles of justice to be an organ of sovereignty, to determine ques tions of right and wrong in society, and en force the demands of natural justice, agree ably to good conscience and fair dealing. Lincoln bar is the representative of legal procedure in the earliest appliances of the common law of England in New England as a colonial factor. Originally its jurisdiction embraced a section of the coast of North America in and about 440 N. L. : — a coun try specifically located between Cape Small Point and the eastern expansion of Pemaquid dependencies, on discovery, in 1602, called by the natives " Mavoo-shen " J; in the English colonial transactions of 1607 con tracted to " Moashan " 2; and in the annals of colonial English literature described as "The Kingdom of Pemaquid."3 The earli est civil organization for general legal procedure, was formed into a ducal province, as the county of "Cornwall," after that of England, the home in the fatherland of many of the early immigrants thereto. Lincoln was applied to the same civil jurisdiction in 1760, in honor (it is sup posed) of the ancestral home of Governor Po vnal who signed the act creating the county. With these facts relating to the origin, succession, name anàjurisdictional territory of Lincoln bar, we proceed to the facts of 1 Hutchinson Hist. Map.
 * Stracby,

2 Popham's despatch.

antecedent administration of law and justice within its bounds; together with the prin ciples of civil polity on which the adminis tration vested underlying legal rights. We therefore go back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth of England, when her no bility besieged the throne with calls of urgency for English colonial seizure and planting of North American soil. " The wings of a man's life," they cried in her ears, " are plumed with the feathers of Death," 1 till the head of the English bar was authorized to act in the premises, and the Royal Licensure of April IO, A.D. 1606, was issued; — the charter-party of the Popham colonial exodus from England, in 1607, embracing a code of civil principles which were organized, on the colonial land ing, and into its Pemaquid expansion; and enlarged in the patent of Eebruary 20, 1631, and there reduced to practical use, in the judicial construction of a civil polity on the basis of the common law of England. The first court organized in New England was within the ancient jurisdiction of Lin coln bar and in Popham's town of Fort St. George, where first was applied the forces of the common law of England as a coloniz ing agency. The antecedents of Lincoln bar were the outgrowth of the royal charter aforesaid: — an indenture drawn up by Lord Chief-Justice Popham of England. Its execution began in the English seizure and possession of the peninsula of" Sabino," August 20, A.D. 1607, the west shore of the mouth of the Kenncbec river, then, as now, known as the " Sagadahoc," its Indian name. The colonial grant was a pregnant act, having fuller expansion at Pemaquid 1 Brown's Genesis.