The Province of Maine is any of several English colonies of that name that existed in the 17th century along the northeast coast of North America, at times roughly encompassing portions of the present-day U.S. states of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and New Brunswick. The province existed through a series of land patents in several incarnations, including one known as New Somersetshire. The final incarnation of the Province of Maine, encompassing the western portions of present-day Maine, was absorbed into the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1650s.