Province of New Hampshire

Province of New Hampshire
Colony of England (1629–1641, 1680–1686, 1689–1707) Colony of Great Britain (1707–76)
1629–1641 1680–1686 1689–1776
Seal of the Province of New Hampshire, 1692
Capital		Portsmouth (de facto 1630-1774; de jure 1679-1775) Exeter (de facto 1774-1789)
Languages		English (sole language of government) Abenaki (various other indigenous languages)
Government		Constitutional monarchy
Monarch
•	1629-1641, 1680-1686, 1689-1707	(list)
•	1664–1685	Charles II
•	1707-1776	(list)
•	1769–1776	George III
President
•	1680–1681	John Cutt
•	1681–1767	(list)
•	1767–1775	John Wentworth
Legislature		General Court of New Hampshire
History
•	Established	1629
•	First royal charter issued, governance from 1680	1679
•	Dominion of New England	1686–1689
•	Second royal charter issued, governance from 1692	1691
•	Disestablished	1776
Currency		New Hampshire pound (Often pegged to the Pound sterling); Spanish dollar
Preceded by Succeeded by Province of Maine Massachusetts Bay Colony Dominion of New England Massachusetts Bay Colony Dominion of New England New Hampshire
Today part of		United States

Seal of the Province of New Hampshire, 1692

The Province of New Hampshire was a colony of England and later of Great Britain. The name was first given in 1629 to the territory between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers on the eastern coast of North America. It was formally organized as an English royal colony on October 7, 1691, during the period of English colonization. The charter was enacted May 14, 1692, by William and Mary, the joint monarchs of England and Scotland, at the same time that the Province of Massachusetts Bay was created. The territory is now the U.S. state of New Hampshire, and was named after the county of Hampshire in southern England by Captain John Mason, its first named proprietor.

First settled in the 1620s, the province consisted for many years of a small number of communities along the seacoast and the Piscataqua River. In 1641 the communities came under the government of the neighboring Massachusetts Bay Colony, until King Charles II issued a commission to John Cutt as President of New Hampshire in 1679. After a brief period as a separate province, the territory was absorbed into the Dominion of New England in 1686. The Dominion collapsed in 1689, and the New Hampshire communities again came under Massachusetts rule until a provincial charter was issued in 1691 by William and Mary. Between 1699 and 1741 the province's governors were also commissioned as governors of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. In 1741, Benning Wentworth was appointed governor solely of New Hampshire. Wentworth laid claim on behalf of the province to the lands west of the Connecticut River, issuing controversial land grants that were disputed by the Province of New York, which also claimed the territory. These disputes resulted in the eventual formation of the state of Vermont.

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