This change of fishing and trading stations into regular townships was a marked political advance, but as yet each town was separate and independent.  The next great step was their union under one government, which was hastened by the action of Massachusetts.  In the assertion of her claim that her northern boundary was a due east and west line three miles north of the most northerly part of the Merrimac, Massachusetts as early as 1636 built a house upon certain salt marshes midway between the Merrimac and Piscataqua.  Subsequently, when Mr. Wheelwright, in 1638, proposed to extend the township of Exeter in that direction, he was warned off by Governor Winthrop, and in 1641 Massachusetts settled at the place a colony of emigrants from Norfolk, in England, and called the town Hampton.

Massachusetts in a few years took an even more decided step.  At Cocheco, or Dover, as it was now called, where the majority of the people were Nonconformists, the desire of support from Massachusetts caused the policy of submission to receive the approval of both contending parties in town; and in 1639 the settlers made overtures to Massachusetts for incorporation.[12] The settlers at Piscataqua, or Strawberry Bank (Portsmouth), being Anglicans, were opposed to incorporation, but submitted from stress of circumstances.  After the death of Captain Mason, in 1635, his widow declined to keep up the industries established by him, and sent word to his servants at Strawberry Bank to shift for themselves.[13]

Several years later Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brooke, who were the chief owners of Dover, obtained from Mason’s merchant partners in England the title to Strawberry Bank, and being in sympathy with Massachusetts they offered, in 1641, to resign to her the jurisdiction of both places.  The proposal was promptly accepted, and two commissioners, Symonds and Bradstreet, went from Massachusetts to arrange with the inhabitants the terms of incorporation.  The towns were guaranteed their liberties, allowed representation in the Massachusetts general court, and exempted from the requirements of the Massachusetts constitution that all voters and officers must be members of the Congregational church.[14]

In 1643 Exeter followed the example of Dover and Strawberry Bank by accepting the protection of Massachusetts, but it thereby lost its founder.  Being under sentence of banishment, Mr. Wheelwright withdrew to the territory of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, where, having obtained a patent, he founded the city of Welles.  In 1644 he applied to Winthrop, and was permitted on a slight submission to take charge of the church at Hampton.[15] After several years he visited England, where he was a favorite of Cromwell.  At the Restoration he returned and settled at Salisbury, in Massachusetts, where he died in 1679.  He is perhaps the single bright light in the ecclesiastical history of early New Hampshire.[16]

The four towns—­Dover, Strawberry Bank, Exeter, and Hampton, with Salisbury and Haverhill on the northern banks of the Merrimac—­were, in 1643, made to constitute the county of Norfolk, one of the four counties into which Massachusetts was then divided.[17]