New England, Council

for, a ‘‘ Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ordering, ruling and governing of New England in America.” It was incorporated November 3, 1620, and was little else than the reorganization of the Plymouth, or North Virginia Company, of 1606. Ferdinando Gorges was the moving ’ spirit of the new corporation. Bradford obtained from this company a patent permitting the settlement of the Pilgrim Fathers. In 1621 Gorges obtained an additional grant of territory called Laconia, which comprised parts of the present States of Maine and New Hampshire. The lands of the new company, which now extended from Long Island to the Bay of Fundy, were distributed among twenty noblemen. ‘““New England Courant,’’ the fourth newspaper published in the colonies. It was established in 1721 at Boston, by James Franklin, who had been deprived of the printing of the Boston News Letter. Franklin’s friends were much opposed to the publication of a new journal, for they thought one quite sufficient for the entire continent. But Franklin inaugurated a new departure in journalism by attacking the government officials and lampooning the clergy. On this account the suppre ion of his paper was threatened, whereupon Benjamin Franklin a umed the editorship, and continued the publication with the same freedom, It was finally suppre ed in 1727. 27