CHAPTER V.

THE PEQUOT WAR,

the Connecticut General Court met at Hartford May 1, 1687, the ninth meeting of that body which is on the records. It is not likely that it represented, as yet, more than eight hundred souls, though the proportion of fighting men in so young a colony must have been abnormally large. Its action was thorough-going. It resolved that there should be " an offensiue warr against the Pequoitt," and a draft of ninety men was ordered from, the three towns, — forty-two from Hartford, thirty from Windsor, and eighteen from Wethersfield, — the whole to be under command of Captain John Mason, of Windsor. The minute distribution of the assessment of the requisition for stores upon the three towns, and the proviso that one half of the corn is to be baked into biscuit " if by any meanes they cann," are evidences of the poverty of the colony, and the resolution with which its rulers drove their demands upon its patriotism up to the highest possible point. It is certain that the people were nearly starving when they were thus called on for a full third of their able-bodied men.

Nine days after the call, May 10, the ninety men were ready, and, with seventy Mohegans under tineas, who was thereafter the ally of the colonists, embarked on the river In three small vessels. Un-cas and his men soon found the voyage uncomfort- able, and begged to be allowed to make the trip to Saybrook by land. When Mason reached Say-brook, after five days of tedious sailing, he found Uncas there, exultant in the success of a battle with the Pequots, in which he had killed seven of his enemies and captured another, who had been living among the colonists as a spy. The spy could appeal to no law, civilized or savage, for safety; but it is a repulsive business to read the punishment which was allowed to be inflicted. He was handed over to the mercy of Uncas and his Mohegans, who tortured and roasted him, and finally ate him.

Lying wind-bound in front of the fort at Say-brook, Mason knew well that his motions were under the sharp eyes of Pequot scouts, and that his entry into the Thames River would find his enemies thoroughly prepared to meet him. Fortified by a council of war, and by an all-night prayer of the chaplain, Mr. Stone, he decided to disobey instructions, pass on to Narragansett Bay, and attack the Pequots from the eastward. The change of programme was no doubt watched carefully by the runners of Sassacus; and when the three vessels had passed the only available landing place

in the Pequot country, the Thames or Peqnot River, the doomed tribe abandoned itself to a sense of triumphant security : the white men had not dared attack them after all, but had chosen the less formidable Indians of Block Island or the Bay as the objects of their revenge. The danger had passed them by.

On Saturday, May 30, the little squadron came to anchor in Narragansett Bay, too late in the afternoon to effect anything that day. It is a witness of their conscientious exposition of the Puritan theory that the urgent need for prompt action in order to gain the advantage of a surprise could not induce them to devote Sunday to that purpose; and then an unfavorable wind kept them from landing until Tuesday night, March-Ing at once to the village of Miantonomoh, the Narragansett chief, Mason demanded his assistance against their common enemy. The chief considered their enterprise a most laudable one, but thought the English too few to deal with such " great captains " as the Pequots. All that could be obtained was permission to pass through the Narragansett country, but a number of Individual volunteers from the surrounding Indians joined the troops on their march. A few days' waiting would have Increased their force by a Massachusetts reinforcement under Captain Patrick, which had already reached Providence ; but Mason balanced the advantage of surprise against this in-

crease of force and pushed on. Thirteen men were sent back with the vessels to meet the main body at the Pequot River ; and the army now consisted of seventy-seven Englishmen, Uncas's Mohe-gans, and about two hundred exceedingly doubtful Narragansett auxiliaries, who were present rather as spectators and critics than as fighting men.

One day's inarch carried the expedition nearly across the present State of Rhode Island, and on the next morning the eagerness of the Narragan-sett auxiliaries to act as a rear guard proved that the trail was becoming uncomfortably warm. Toward evening, when just north of the present town of Stonington, Mason called a halt, and was told by the Narragansetts that they were now close to one of the two great Pequot forts; the other, the chief residence of Sassacus, being several hours' journey further on. Camp was formed, and the men slept on their arms, their outposts having been pushed near enough to the fort to hear the revelry of the Indian garrison, which lasted until midnight. Before daybreak, June 5, the men were up and on the march. Two miles of an Indian trail brought them to the foot of a swelling hill, still known as Pequot Hill, near Groton. Here Uncas was called oil for explanations, as there were no signs of the Pequots. He told Mason that the fort was at the top of the hill before him, and that the Narragansetts at the rear had now fallen into a condition of abject fright, " Tell

them not to fly," said Mason, " but stand behind, at what distance they please, and see now whether Englishmen will fight,"

Underbill with part of the men on the southern slope, and Mason with the rest on the opposite side, stole cautiously up the hill. There were no sentinels, and the garrison was still sound asleep. As the assailants came within a rod of the palisade, there was a bark from an Indian cur within it, and some Pequot warrior, perhaps starting up from a dream, called out " Owanux ! Owanux ! " (Englishmen.) Still there was no general alarm within the fort until the assaulting party fired a volley through the palisade, which was answered by a terrified yell from the awakened garrison. The piles of bushes which served for gates were torn down, and the English swarmed through into the fort, but still the Pequots remained within their wigwams. Mason, after entering, stood in the main street and saw not an Indian in it to the other side of the fort. Every wigwam which was entered, however, became the stage for a desperate hand-to-hand struggle. Some of the Pequots began to shoot from the wigwam doors ; and Mason, shouting " We must burn them," touched a firebrand to the mats which covered a neighboring hut. The fire, fanned by a rising northeaster, spread through the fort; Underhill on the other side aided it with gunpowder; and soon the attacking party was forced to hurry out of the fur-

nace heat. There was no such privilege for the hated Pequots. In an hour, from four to six hundred of them were roasted to death, seven being taken prisoners, and seven breaking through the line and escaping. From one hundred and fifty to two hundred of the Indians were warriors ; the rest were old men, women and children.

It Is true that two of Mason's party were killed, and about twenty wounded, in the whole struggle, but many of the recorded casualties bear strong testimony to the disadvantages under which the Indians fought. Some of the men were saved from arrow wounds by their neck-cloths : when so slight a buckler was sufficient, the force of the weapon could not have been very terrible. Similarly, a piece of cheese in the pocket of another was enough to intercept an arrow in its deadly flight. In recounting the subsequent attack upon the retreating party, Underhill contemptuously says that the Pequots fought with the Mohegans and Narragansetts in such a manner that neither would have killed seven men in seven years. The arrow was shot into the air at such an elevation as to drop on an adversary, if the adversary had not sufficient forethought to step out of the way ; and each arrow was retained until the result of its predecessor was ascertained. The English regularly avoided the weapon, then picked it up and broke it, and thus gradually exhausted the ammunition of the enemy. Savages though they were,

it Is pitiful to think of human beings, locked up in a furnace by a circle of guns and keen-tempered swords, and forced to rely on such weapons as the fallacious Indian arrow. And yet to the last the Pequots crawled up to the palisade and shot their Impotent bolts at their Inaccessible foe.

Mason's thorough-going massacre of men, women and children has been compared to Arnold's butchery at New London, long afterward, to Mason's manifest disadvantage, since Arnold at least did not burn the village, drive the women and children hack into the flames, and roast them In the ashes of their homes. The comparison is unfair. Arnold had not the slightest reason to apprehend from the women and children of New London such treatment as Mason knew that the Indian squaws and children would mete out to his men If they were defeated and captured. In the gray of the opening morning, while Indian men and women, hardly to be distinguished from one another by their dress and appearance, were Tying with one another In the ferocity of their resistance, it was practically impossible for Mason's men to make distinction. To say this Is not to assert that they were under a controlling desire to make such, a distinction. On the contrary, probably not a man of them but was there tinder the religions confidence that the Pequots were acting the part of the Canaanltes In resisting the children of Israel, and that a similar fate was

their proper portion. In this they probably differed from Benedict Arnold. Much as we may regret that Endicott's unpardonable raid had decided that Sassacus was to be the enemy of the colonists, and the disreputable Uncas their friend and ally, this decision, when reached, had no possible result but the complete overthrow of the Pe-quots. It is easy to talk of sparing non-combatants, but not easy to apply it to a case in which the non-combatants insist on fighting to the death. Nevertheless, it is a truth that there is no feature in the history of the commonwealth which is more unpleasant reading than the conduct of the Pequot war from its causeless outbreak down to its conclusion.

Hiring some of his generous Narragansett allies to carry the wounded. Mason now began a retreat to his vessels, which were just sailing into what is now New London harbor, but half a dozen miles away. By this time, nearly the whole remaining power of the Pequot tribe had gathered at the ruins of the fort. The chroniclers calmly state the details of the ecstasy of rage into which the sight of their slaughtered comrades threw them; they note with a curious interest, as if speaking of the almost human affection of a she-bear robbed of her whelps, how the Pequots stamped, shrieked, tore their hair, and finally rushed down the hill to charge the rear of the retiring column, But — alas for all excuses for the expedition ! — they also

42 CONNECTICUT, note that a rear guard of a dozen men was sufficient to repulse all the assaults of two thirds of the whole Pequot power. The English force reached the vessels without difficulty, finding there Captain Patrick and the Massachusetts contingent. Putting the wounded on the ships, the uninjured men returned in triumph by land to Saybrook.

The last council of the Pequot nation was held on the day following the capture of the fort. It is not difficult to imagine the feeling of the participants. They had proved, even to themselves, that it was impossible for them to resist the strangers in the field ; and it seems to have been as impossible for them to conceive the notion of surrender. Having first put to death every relative of Uncas within their reach, they came to a Roman resolution. The route by which they had originally entered Connecticut was now blocked by the new English towns; but there was a possible road of return along the Sound, where there were as yet no settlements. Burning their villages and crops, they set out on their desperate venture. Thirty of the men, with many of the women and children, soon abandoned it and returned to their old home, where they took refuge in a swamp. Toward the end of June, a Massachusetts party of one hundred and twenty men under Stoughton was guided to their hiding place by the Narragan-setts, who had not ventured to attack them, but

said they were " holding them " for the English. The Pequots met their fate calmly and without resistance. All the men were put to death in cold blood with the exception of two, who promised to guide the party to the hiding place of Sas-sacus ; and even these, proving unwilling to fulfill their bargain, were subsequently killed. Thirty-three of the eighty women were presented to the Indian allies ; the remainder were sent to Massachusetts and sold as slaves.

The main body of the tribe pursued their march for the Hudson under Sassacus and Mononotto. While crossing the Connecticut, they came upon three white men in a canoe, killed them after a stout resistance, and hung their bodies on the trees upon the shore. After passing Saybrook, they were driven by lack of supplies to take a route close to the shore, in order to dig shell-fish. Such circumstances were not favorable for a forced march ; the daily journeys grew shorter ; and that keen-scented hound, Uncas, was on their track. Stoughton's men had joined Mason, and the combined force had taken ship at Saybrook to pursue by the Sound, while Dncas and his men searched the shore. Stragglers from the main body were occasionally met, and one incident will indicate their fate. Near Guilford, a Pequot chief with a few men was sighted. Escaping from view for a few minutes, the fugitives hid at the end of the cape which juts out from the eastern side of the

harbor, Uncas searched the opposite side of the harbor, but sent part of his men to search the eastern cape. Driven from their refuge, the Pe-quots swam across the harbor and were shot as they landed by the Mohegans. Uncas cut off the head of the Pequot chief and lodged it in the branches of an oak, where it hung for years, giving the place the local name of Sachem's Head.

About the time when the pursuers had reached the place where the town of Fairfield was afterwards planted, a Pequot was captured who was found willing, in return for life, to engage to kill or 'betray Sassacus. He kept his agreement. He joined the main body, and, when suspected and forced to flee, brought back word that the main body of the Pequots had taken post in a swamp, the stronghold of a local sachem, near Greenfield Hill. The untiring pursuers set out at once for the place, some twenty-five miles away, found it, and undertook to surround the swamp. There were really two swamps, a larger and a smaller, separated by a neck of firm ground covered with bushes. After a hand-to-hand struggle, the besiegers succeeded in cutting down the bushes and reducing the coverts to one, which their numbers were sufficient to surround efficiently, A call for surrender was then sent in. It was accepted by the local tribe on whose hospitality the Pequots had forced themselves, and by the women and children of the Pequots, so that the number of the

besieged was reduced from three hundred to one hundred. Those who were left were the picked men. of the tribe. They saw before them the strangers who had suddenly flung them from their supremacy to their present position, and they had a savage preference of death to surrender. They rushed so furiously on the messenger that the English found difficulty in rescuing him. All night long they crept up to the border of the swamp and shot their ineffectual arrows at the besiegers; and in the gray of the next morning they made their last burst for freedom. In a heavy fog they rushed on that part of the English line commanded by Patrick, and the fight at once became so furious that the rest of the English force had to be brought up to Patrick's assistance. In the confusion, about seventy of the hundred Pe-quots burst through and got off; but many of them were found dead in the pursuit. The subsequent course of the survivors is not known. There is a tradition that they made their way to the mountainous region of western North Carolina, and that, forty years afterward, the intelligence of King Philip's war brought them or as far north as Virginia, on their way back to strike another blow at the English, when they were stopped by hearing of Philip's death.

Sassacus and Mononotto had left their tribe before the swamp fight, either overwhelmed with unpopularity, or unable to spur the remainder of

the tribe to the necessary celerity of movement. Their party of thirty or forty men escaped to the Mohawks; but their new hosts put them all to death, sending their scalps to the English to relieve them from further anxiety. Only Mononotto escaped, and it Is not known what became of him. His wife, with her children, was among the captives at the swamp. It is pleasant to record that she had been very kind to the two captured English girls, and that Governor Winthrop gave directions that she should be treated with corresponding kindness. All the prisoners, even including the wife of Mononotto, were made slaves, some being kept in Connecticut, and others sent to Massachusetts or the West Indies. They proved, however, most unsatisfactory slaves, and their servitude was in almost every case soon terminated by death.

The downfall of the Pequots inured largely to the benefit of Uncas. Many of the original tribe took membership in the Mohegan branch, though some preferred to join the Narragansetts or the Long Island Indians. It was not long before the jealous Narragansetts called Uncas to account before the equally jealous colonists for harboring Pequots to such an extent as to make his own power a source of possible danger. An investigation showed that there were still at large some two hundred Pequots, half of which number were given to Uncas and the rest to the Narragansett

chiefs. Late in 1888, the delicate negotiation was closed by a treaty between the Connecticut delegates, Miantonomoh for the Narragansetts, and Uncas. The two high contracting Indian parties were to retain their respective Pequots, paying an annual tribute for them and incorporating them into their tribes. Connecticut was to have all the territory formerly occupied by the Pequots, and was to act. as umpire in. any quarrel between Uncas and Miantonomoh, The former lords of the soil had disappeared, and the stranger had taken their place.

The tripartite treaty of 1688 settled the supremacy of the English for the future. Purchases of lands from the Indians went on with Increasing frequency until prohibited by the general court In 1663, Even Uncas was unwary enough to make such transfers ; and in one of them, in 1840, in return for " five and a half yards of trucking cloth, with stockings and other things," he is said to have transferred to the commonwealth his whole territory, covering the whole northern portion of New London County, with the southern portion of Tolland and Windham counties. The Mohegans, however, insisted that the transaction was only a covenant to sell their lands to no white men without first giving the commonwealth an opportunity to buy, and their claims were a longstanding source of difficulty.

Miantonomoh was not satisfied with the treaty

of 1888, It is not probable that he would have been permanently satisfied with any treaty which left the parvenu Uncas in the position of a great chief. An attack made by Uncas upon a chief related to Miantonomoh furnished an opportune casus belli. With a discretion worthy of a more highly civilized monarch, Miantonomoh postponed the declaration of war to the more urgent necessity of making war. The whole power of the Narragansetts was secretly set in motion for the Mohegan country, Uncas was not asleep. His runners saw the host of the enemy crossing a ford, and carried the intelligence to their chief at his fort near the present city of Norwich. When the Narragansetts found the lair of the Mohegan chief, they found that they had to deal with the whole strength of his tribe, which he had had time to call in.

Uncas had felt himself strong enough to advance a few miles, though he had but half the force of his enemy, for he relied with confidence on the mingling of unscrupulous treachery and headlong courage which had been the Pequot title to the soil from the beginning. He signaled for a parley as soon as the Narragansetts came within hearing, and, meeting the Narragansett chief between the lines, appealed to him to prevent a needless effusion of blood by a single combat of the leaders, Miantonomoh rejected the proposal, perhaps with some contempt, and Uncas at once

gave the signal for which his men had been wait-Ing, by dropping prone upon the ground, His men instantly poured a flight of arrows upon the Narragansetts, and followed it by a charge, which Uncas rose and headed. The battle lasted but a moment; the Narragansetts fled, almost without striking a blow; and Miantonomoh, deserted by his people and over-weighted by an English corselet, was caught, after a long chase, by Uncas and one of his sachems. The captive kept a stolid silence, refusing to beg for mercy, even by gesture.

The tender mercies of Uncas would doubtless have been swift to visit Miantonomoh but for one circumstance. The Rhode Island settlers were not forgetful of the benefits which they had received at the hands of the Narragansetts ; and one of them, Gorton, of Warwick, sent Uncas a violent message, threatening him with English vengeance If he injured Miantonomoh. Uncas, unable to discriminate clearly between English sectaries or to balance the respective power of white faces, carried his prisoner to Hartford for trial. The governor and magistrates referred him to the commissioners of the united colonies, who were to meet at Boston in the following September. Until then, Miantonomoh remained at Hartford.

The commissioners, much as they dreaded Miantonomoh, did not see their way clear to condemning him to death. In the emergency they summoned into council five of the delegates to a synod then

sitting at Boston. These counselors rode roughshod over the scruples which had given pause to the lay mind. To them the Narragansett was a Philistine, an Amalekite, who was of necessity guilty. They decided that he must die, and the commissioners acquiesced in the decision, They directed the Connecticut authorities to give him up to Uncas for execution outside of the commonwealth's jurisdiction, to detail witnesses to see that all should be done in order, and to defend Uncas against any threatened vengeance for the act. The most shocking attendant circumstance is the fact that the announcement of the sentence was postponed until the Connecticut commissioners had safely reached Hartford, for the reason that Mian-tonomoh himself had given notice that his people intended to capture them on the way and hold them as hostages for his safety. It is no wonder that so dangerous a chieftain should find no mercy. The Narragansett chief was delivered to the custody of Uncas, two Englishmen joining the party to be witnesses to the execution. When the Mohegans had reached the scene of the battle near Norwich, Uncas gave a signal to Ms brother, Wa-wequa, whose place was just behind the captive. He at once sunk Ms hatchet into Mlantonoraoh's brain, and death followed instantly, Uncas devoured a piece of flesh cut from the dead man's shoulder, declaring it the sweetest meat he had ever eaten.

The only serious difficulties with Indians thereafter were in the southwest, and were really offshoots from the continual troubles between the Dutch and the Indians. There were several murders and savage assaults, the most notable victim being Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, of Massachusetts, who had settled near Stamford, and was killed, with some seventeen others, in a night attack by the Indians. The Narragansetts seem to have taken no concerted part in this border warfare. They had. come to despair of making head against the whites ; and their hopes of revenge were concentrated on Uncas and his tribe, upon whom they made repeated attacks. Their only results were renewed and Increased fines and tribute Imposed by the white supporters of Uncas, About 1658 these attacks ceased, and the Narragansetts resigned themselves to their fate.

The chiefs to whom Pequots had been assigned, and especially Uncas, were so greedy and tyrannical in their rule that the conquered people began to drift away from them and form scattered and Illegal communities. One or two of their new chiefs showed themselves good friends of the English ; and in 1855 the New England commissioners, to Uncas's unconcealed disgust, consented to a reorganization of the Pequots into two tribes under chieftains of their own blood, Hermon Garret and Cassasinamon. In 1667 the colony established a reservation for Cassasinamon's tribe In the present

township of Ledyard, near Groton ; and in 1688 a settlement was assigned to the other tribe in North Stonington. The original force of the Pequot has been persistent enough to carry their descendants, after a fashion, through the intervening years in which the subject tribes have disappeared. In 1850 the Ledyard settlement held 989 acres, and the North Stonirigton settlement 24.0, with a mongrel population of twenty-eight and fifteen persons respectively. In 1880 the county of New London still held the largest proportion of the Connecticut " Indians," 147 out of a total of 255 in the State.

As the record of Indian difficulties ends with the death of Miantonomoh, the record of Indian decadence begins. Individuals, under the tacit or express authorization of the general court, bought lands of the Indian proprietors; and the early town records begin with deeds given by a number of sachems, whose unutterable names are only a little less awe-inspiring than the hieroglyphics by which they are indicated, transferring their lands to whites for the pettiest considerations. Real property titles in the State are traced back to these Indian deeds. When a tribe had entirely gotten rid of the inheritance, its few remaining members drifted off to other parts of the country, or became a town charge as paupers. But the general court was careful so to limit these transfers as not to drive the few dangerous tribes to

desperation, and the good results were seen In the outbreak of King Philip's war in 1675, The Connecticut Indians left the colony free to bend all Its energies to the assistance of the sister col- onies. Even the Pequots and Mohegans were faithful allies and soldiers, and enjoyed the Indian luxuries of seeing the final overthrow of the Nar-ragansetts, and of executing Canonchet, the son of Miantonomoh.

Uncas died about 1688. Two of his alleged descendants were living in 1800. His tribe and Its successive chiefs seem to have found a fatal fascination in the process of land transfer, which they never could master. Drunken sachems made transfers of land which was really the common property of the tribe; or the tribe, having a well-founded apprehension of the sachem's weakness for strong drink, made clumsy attempts to make trust deeds of their lands to white men in whom they confided, while the trustees considered these Instruments as transfers of the fee simple. The result was abundant litigation; and some of the commonwealth difficulties arising from it will be considered hereafter. In 1721 a committee of the general court examined and decided on these transfers, reserving some 5,000 acres to the Mohegans, and mating the tract Inalienable so long as a single Mohegan should survive. This arrangement was practically confirmed by royal commissions in 1787 and 1748, on appeal by the Indians. The tribe sent

many of its number Into the American army during the Revolution, and some eighteen of them were killed. In 1786 a few of the survivors, with other Connecticut Indians, went to the Oneida country, in New York, and there established the Brothertown tribe. There remained to the tribe In 1850 some 2,300 acres of its reservation at Montville, with some sixty persons living on it, and about the same number scattered In other parts of the country.

However we may discredit the accounts given by the first settlers of Indian immorality, it is impossible to exaggerate their subsequent degradation. Ignorant, poverty-stricken, unclean, drunken, and licentious to the lowest degree, the smaller Indian tribes disappeared with startling rapidity. In 1680 there were but five hundred warriors left in the whole colony. In 1774 there were only eight left in Greenwich, nine in Norwalk, and none in Stamford. There is not now a drop of pure Indian blood in the State. The so-called Indians are the progeny of two centuries of Irregular intercourse between Indians, negroes, mulattoes, and whites.

Efforts have not been wanting to civilize or evangelize the race, but they have been of little avail. Pierson, Fitch, and Barber preached to them with hardly any perceptible result; Gookin and John Eliot entered the colony for the same purpose, but withdrew defeated; and the only

effort which ever came to anything like success met it outside of Connecticut. Eleazar Wheelock began preaching at Lebanon in 1735. In 1782 his Indian school numbered twenty, and he went to England to raise funds for it, developing it into what became Dartmouth College, Among Ms Connecticut pupils he had received in 1743 a Mo-hegan aged twenty, who took the name of Samson Occam. After an irregular education and service as teacher on Long Island and elsewhere, Occom was ordained in 1759 by the presbytery of Suffolk.

L. I., and became a successful preacher. He stands out as about the only civilized product of Connecticut Indian origin ; and even he occasionally relapsed into intoxication, to his own bitter repentance. He made a part of the Brothertown tribe, and died among its members in 1792.

There is little room or excuse for romance in the Indian history of the commonwealth; and it has seemed best to bring it down to its conclusion at once, In order to confine the subsequent story of the commonwealth, to the history of the dom- inant race.

CHAPTER VI,

THE CONNECTICUT COLONY,

when the Pequot war broke out, there were but three English settlements within the present area of Connecticut. Leaving Massachusetts, the Connecticut River flows to the southwest and then to the southeast, forming two sides of a very ob- tuse and irregular angle, At the apex of this angle, and on the western side of the river, was planted the town of Newtown (the present capital city of Hartford). On the same side of the river were Dorchester (Windsor), a few miles above Hartford, and Watertown (Wethersfield), a few miles below Hartford. To the north, and just beyond the Massachusetts boundary line, was Aga-wam (Springfield), Pynchon's settlement; but it was not known for some years whether it was in or beyond the jurisdiction of the mother colony. Until this was ascertained, this town was taken and deemed to be a part of Connecticut, The first settlers had no notion of leaving government behind them when they left Massachusetts. The migration took place under direction of eight persons, headed by Roger Ludlow and William

Pynchon, acting under the commission from the Massachusetts General Court, which was to be In force for only one year. By the time it expired, the new colony had begun its own system of government.

The meeting of the first legislative body, the u Corte," was held at Newtown, April 26, 1636. The three migrating towns at first retained even their Massachusetts names, and this Inchoate com-monwealth government was little more than a consequence of the Massachusetts commission. It was not until February 21 of the next year that the name of Hartford was substituted for that of Newtown, that of Wethersfield for Watertown, and that of Windsor for Dorchester. The name of Hartford was probably meant to commemorate the birthplace of Mr, Stone, Hertford, near London. Windsor was taken from its English namesake ; and Wethersfield" was named from Wethers-field. In Essex, England, the birthplace of one of the leading men of the settlement, John Talcott, commonly called " Tailcoat " in the records. For a year the court met at the three towns in turn, two magistrates from each town making up Its number, except when Pynchon was present and raised the number to seven. Like all the commonwealth legislatures of New England, this one exercised both legislative and iudicial functions, taking from the latter its title of the " Corte," afterwards the " General Court," as In the Massa-

chusetts charter. For the first year its proceedings were confined to the prevention of the trade In muskets with the Indians, the enforcement of military drill, the regulation of swine and other animals, the appointment of constables, some probate business, and one salt at law, that of a land. claimant against the people of Wethersfield.

On May 1,1637, the legislature, now first called the General Court, met at Hartford In a form more fitting for a separate commonwealth, In addition to the six magistrates there were now present nine " committees," or deputies, three from each town. Hooker, In his letter to Winthrop, states that the " committees " were chosen by the towns; that they met at Hartford, elected the six magistrates, and gave them an oath of office. The migratory commission from Massachusetts was thus supplanted by a new government, deriving its authority directly from the towns. In the distinction between deputies and magistrates, slight at first, there was the germ of the commonwealth's subsequent bi-cameral system. Springfield was represented occasionally during 1637-88, and her affairs were considered to be under the jurisdiction of the new colony, For the next two years Springfield is neither represented nor referred to, the general court confining its attention to the other three towns. On June 2, 1841, the Massachusetts General Court recognized Springfield, on petition therefrom, as one of its towns, and appointed com-

missioners to define the boundary line between the two colonies.

The General Court, under its new constitution, at once assumed a wider range of action. Its first meeting declared war against the Pequots ; its second, June 2, 1687, ordered a draft of thirty men "to sett downe In the Pequoltt Countrey and River in place convenient to mayntaine or right yt God by Conquest hath given to vs." At the meeting June 26, it was decided that Haynes and Ludlow should " parle with the bay [Massachusetts] about or settinge downe in the Pequoitt Countrey." For Massachusetts had advanced a claim to the Pequot soil, based partly on the exceedingly hazy geography of the time, and partly on conquest; while Connecticut had a keen perception that this section was essential to her commonwealth's development, and meant to hold It, In the end her determination prevailed, and she still keeps the Pequot country.

It would hardly be too strong to say that the establishment of the town and of the church was coincident: the universal agreement in religion made town government and church government but two sides of the same medal, and the same persons took part in both. In fact, the three original settlements had entered the new territory not only as completely organized towns, but as com- pletely organized churches, only one (Watertown) having left its minister behind. The original

church of Watertown is therefore still In Massa-chusetts ; the original churches of Cambridge (Newtown) and Dorchester are now in Hartford and Windsor. For nearly a century (until 1727) the same persons in each town discussed and decided ecclesiastical and civil affairs Indifferently, acting as a town or a church meeting. The same body laid the taxes, called the minister, and provided for his salary. When the gradual recognition of other sects reduced the Congregational order from its exclusive to a merely predominant position in the common wealth, a trace of the old system remained in the Congregational churches in the dual control of the " church and society " in each congregation, — the former, composed of church-members, having ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; the latter, composed of pew-holders and contributors, having a financial and administrative control, and joint action of the two being usually necessary. The " society " represents the former town meeting. The Connecticut churches agreed with those of Massachusetts in their Congregational system ; and their pastors and teachers were called upon again and again to make the journey through the wilderness to Boston, in order to take part in the synods made necessary by the vexed questions of Puritan belief and practice. Connecticut, however, did not agree with Massachusetts in making church-membership a prerequisite to voting and holding office. In this omission, it maintained

the complete independence both of Its churches and. of Its towns; but it gave rise to many of its subsequent ecclesiastical difficulties. It was largely a dispute on this point that had sent the first settlers into the wilderness, and the original three towns would undoubtedly have insisted on local freedom in this respect. When new towns were formed, offshoots from the first three, it was natural in the eyes of both town and colony that this freedom should be continued to them, and none of them desired any ecclesiastical restriction on the right of suffrage. Those who desired such an arrangement went into the New Haven jurisdiction, of which it was an essential part.

The independence of the town was a political fact which has colored the whole history of the commonwealth, and, through it, of the United States, Even in Massachusetts, after the real beginning of government, the town was subordinate to the colony ; and, though the independence of the churches forced a considerable local freedom there, it was not so fundamental a fact as in Connecticut, Here the three original towns had in the beginning left commonwealth control behind them when they left the parent colony. They had gone into the wilderness, each the only organized political power within its jurisdiction. Since their prototypes, the little tuns of the primeval German forest, there had been no such examples of the perfect capacity of the political cell, the " town,"

for self-government. In Connecticut it was the towns that created the commonwealth ; and the consequent federative idea has steadily influenced the colony and State alike. In Connecticut, the governing principle, due to the original constitution of things rather than to the policy of the commonwealth, has been that the town is the residuary legatee of political power; that it is the State which is called upon to make out a clear case for powers to which it lays claim; and that the towns have a prima^ facie case In their favor wherever a doubt arises.

All this is so like the standard theory of the relations of the States to the federal government that it is necessary to notice the peculiar exactness with which the relations of Connecticut towns to the commonwealth are proportioned to the relations of the commonwealth to the United States. In other States, power runs from the State upwards and from the State downwards ; in Connecticut, the towns have always been to the commonwealth as the commonwealth to the Union. It was to be the privilege of Connecticut to keep the notion of this federal relation alive until it could be made the fundamental law of all the commonwealths in 1787-89. In this respect, the life principle of the American Union may be traced straight back to the primitive union of the three little settlements on the bank of the Connecticut River. All this, however, may be left to the

chapter on the Convention of 1787, The point In question here is the introduction of the democratic element into the American system, and the claims of Connecticut to the credit or responsibility for it.

The first constitution of Connecticut — the first written constitution, in the modern sense of the term, as a permanent limitation on governmental power, known in. history, and certainly the first American constitution of government to embody the democratic idea — was adopted by a general assembly, or popular convention, of the planters of the three towns, held at Hartford, January 1.4, 1688 (9), The common opinion is that democracy came into the American system through the compact made in the cabin of the Mayflower, though that instrument was based on no political principle whatever, and began with a formal acknowledgment of the king as the source of all authority. It was the power of the crown " by virtue" of which " equal laws " were to be enacted, and the "covenant" was merely a makeshift to meet a temporary emergency: it had not a particle of political significance, nor was democracy an impelling force in it. It must be admitted that the Plymouth system was accidentally democratic, but it was from the absence of any great need for government, or for care to preserve homogeneity in religion, not from political purpose, as in Connecticut. It was a pas-

sive, not an active system; and it cannot be said to have Influenced other American commonwealths. Another though less prevalent opinion is, that the first democratic commonwealth was the mother colony of Massachusetts Bay. The intensely democratic feeling subsequently developed in Massachusetts has been reflected on her early history, and has given it a light which never belonged to it. On the contrary, it is not difficult to show that the settlement of Connecticut was itself merely a secession of the democratic element from Massachusetts, and that the Massachusetts freemen owed their final emancipation from a theocracy to the example given them by the eldest daughter of the old commonwealth.

He who studies carefully the history of Massachusetts from 1829 until 1690 will see that there was a constant struggle in that colony between two conflicting forces, and that its earlier phases were coincident and complicated with the Connecticut secession. The better blood of the colony was determined to establish a privileged class of some sort; and the bulk of the freemen, Instinctively Inclined to democracy, found it difficult to resist the claims of blood, wealth, and influence, backed by the pronounced support of the church. •For the ministers of the colony, in spite of their evidently conscientious wish to separate church and state, seem to have had no notion of the real boundaries between the two, and were constantly in

favor of measures which tended straight to the establishment of an oligarchy. Whenever the dominant class desired to overcome the rising opposition of the commons, the readiest and surest means was to offer to submit the question to the decision of the " elders," or ministers. The commons never ventured to refuse ; and the ministers never failed to decide in accordance with the wishes of the dominant class, The expressions of dissenting writers, as to the " spiritual tyranny " in early Massachusetts, must be taken always with very large allowance. Ecclesiastical punishments were not severe, according to the universal stand- ard of the times ; and the result of hostile research seems curiously inadequate to the indignation which has been spent in it. But one must admit that the early Massachusetts system, whatever else it may have been, was not even meant to be a democracy, " Democracy," said Cotton, the spokesman of the dominant class, " I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth."

The question appeared with the transfer of the charter government from England to Massachusetts. The charter gave to the governor, eighteen assistants, and the freemen, assembled in a single chamber as the " great and general Court," the power of electing officers and making laws and ordinances. The dominant class of the colony was determined to restrict this general court,

which the superior numbers of the freemen could control, to the functions of a mere electing body, leaving to the assistants, what the charter did not give them, the duties of making and enforcing laws. The first meeting of the Court of Assistants in Massachusetts made the support of the clergy a commonwealth matter; the second assumed control of the admission of inhabitants to the towns; and, early in 1632, the settlement of town boundaries, and the control of town interests, were assumed by the assistants without any authority, either from the charter or from the towns. Secular and ecclesiastical influences were strong enough to induce the freemen, in 1630, to confirm the usurped powers of the Court of Assistants ; and this was followed in the next year by the exclusion of all but church-members from " the liberties of the Commonwealth," that is, from voting. So wide was the effect that Hut-chinson asserts, and Judge Story approves the estimate, that five-sixths of the people were still disfranchised as late as 1676, The whole system was upheld by Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, in a letter to Hooker, on the ground that it was unwarrantable and unsafe to refer matters " of counsel or judicature" to the body of the people, because " the best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser." The people, or that better part of them who should be admitted to vote, were to choose

the Court of Assistants; but that wiser body was to make the laws and enforce them.

Such a system was certain to arouse dissatisfaction ; and a due regard to the fact will make it easier to understand why the Massachusetts char- ter was finally lost so tamely. Dissatisfaction, to the honor of the Massachusetts freemen, first took the shape of assertion of local liberty, of town freedom rather than of individual freedom. There were attempts at independent town action before 1634; but the curious and perhaps significant fact is that nearly all of them took place in the three towns which afterwards made up the Connecticut secession. The towns in 1634 informally sent two deputies each to Boston to get a sight of the patent, The sight was enough to expose the usurpation of the assistants ; and at the general court in May the freemen would make no elections until their deputies had been recognized as a factor in the government. Nevertheless, influence, arid particularly that of the ministers, was still strong enough to secure the passage of an act, the very next year, constituting a council for life, consisting at first of three members, but meant to "be larger in future. There is every indication of an organized design to establish an hereditary order, or at least a life privilege for certain classes, in order to attract influential and wealthy immigrants from the mother country ;• but luckily Massachusetts freemen knew how to cut the knot. When it

was proposed in 1639 to give the governor a life tenure, the freemen answered by taking all " mag-istratical" powers from the council, and that body died the death soon after. Time would fail in telling the further details of the struggle, — the success of the deputies In maintaining that share in the government which the charter had not given them ; the efforts of the assistants to secure the " negative voice," by which they were to have a veto on the deputies; the famous "sow business," which convulsed the colony, and brought the "negative voice" into common disrepute; and the final compromise in 1644, by which the introduction of a bi-cameral system gave both the assistants and the deputies a negative voice. All these belong to Massachusetts history, and were the efforts of democracy to get its head out of water.

In every point, the ministers had been on the side of the assistants. The latter had always been willing to refer every disputed question to the elders, and had always been supported. The standing grievance had been that the assistants would not admit the right of the general court (which really meant the deputies, or the freemen whom they represented) to adopt a body of laws as a permanent limitation on the judicial powers of the assistants ; they wished to decide every case " on its own merits." Winthrop himself acknowledged, in 1639, that the people " had long desired a body of laws, and thought their condition very unsafe

while so much power rested in the discretion of magistrates; " and he adds the very credible note that the magistrates and some of the ministers were " not very forward in this matter." In December, 1.641, a brief code of laws was extorted by the freemen ; but it left great blanks, which the assistants still persisted in filling as they saw fit. In 1845 the elders formally declared that the freemen were to choose the assistants, but that the authority of the latter was not derived from the freemen or to be limited by them, and that they were to decide according to the word of God in the absence of express law. The deputies yielded; and it was not until 1649 that they at last secured a complete code of laws.

Reference has already been made to the patent differences between the three migrating towns and the five which they left behind them, and to the probability that there was some political difference to account for them, A regard to the coincident struggle against class power in Massachusetts will make it still more probable that the migrating towns were simply those which did. not choose to continue the struggle longer at home, but preferred to establish a more democratic system for themselves in the wilderness, and without any charter. Hooker was undoubtedly the strength of the migration ; and he had been so notoriously opposed to Cotton in the old colony that it would be reasonable to presume that he differed toto coelo

from Cotton's views as to democracy. In answering the letter of Winthrop mentioned above, he is evidently cautious, and unwilling to provoke an argument; but lie dissents from Winthrop's entire position, and says : "In matters of greater consequence, which concern the common good, a general council, chosen by all, to transact businesses which concern all, I conceive, under favor, most suitable to rule and most safe for relief of the whole." The difference between him and Winthrop is marked ; and it would not be difficult to say, from these two letters, which of them held the seed from which sprang the modern American commonwealth. Again, the first step of the Connecticut settlers was to secure what their Massachusetts brethren were still struggling for — popular control of legislation. Codes of laws were merely the symbol: democracy wanted the recognition of the deputies, the direct representatives of the towns, as a factor in the government; and this was secured by the constitution of 1639. It even provided a way by which the deputies, if the governor and the " magistrates " (answering to the Massachusetts title of "assistants") refused to call them together, might meet and organize a supreme legislature without their associates, — a provision wholly inexplicable without a careful regard to the contemporary struggle in Massachusetts.

Here the evidence that government "of the people, by the people, for the people," first took

shape in Connecticut, and that the American form of commonwealth originated here, and not in Massachusetts, Virginia, or any other colony, might well stop. The cast in favor of Hooker, however, has now an impregnable basis, which was wanting when the standard histories of the commonwealth were written, His letter to Winthrop might be made the foundation of the claim that he had supplied the spirit of the Connecticut constitution; and yet the basis is an unsatisfactory one. It is evident enough that the complete popular control over government which was the characteristic of the new Connecticut system was neither familiar nor welcome at the time in the other Puritan commonwealth ; but the letter alone is not enough to establish a connection of this fact with Hooker. All this time there has been in existence an abstract of a sermon of Hooker's, preached at Hartford, May 81, 1638, some seven months before the framing of the constitution. Henry Wolcott, Jr., of Windsor, had been in the excellent Puritan habit of taking notes of the sermons to which he listened, and lie had left behind him a MS. volume of abstracts of Hooker's sermons. Among them was this sermon. Dr. J. H. Trumbull saw its importance and deciphered its short-hand characters. Any one who will read this abstract, and try to imagine the way in which the writer of the letter to Winthrop must have clothed this skeleton with flesh and blood, and the effect on his hearers, will

appreciate Its Importance In American history. If the germ is potentially the whole development, this is the most important profession of political faith In our history, It is as follows : —

deut. i. 13. — Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you. Captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, over fifties, over tens, etc.

Doctrine. I. That the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people, by God's own allowance.

II, The privilege of election, which belongs to the people, therefore must not be exercised according to their humours, but according to the blessed will and law of God.

III. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them.

Reasons, 1. Because the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people.

2. Because, by a free choice, the hearts of the people will be more inclined to the love of the persons chosen and more ready to yield obedience.

3. Because of that duty and engagement of the people. Uses. The lesson taught is three-fold : —

1st, There is matter of thankful acknowledgment in the appreciation of God's faithfulness towards us, and the permission of these measures that God doth command and vouchsafe.

2dly. Of reproof — to dash the councils of all those that shall oppose it.

3dly. Of exhortation — to persuade us, as God hath given us liberty, to take it.

And, lastly, as God hath spared our lives, and given us them in liberty, so to seek the guidance of God, and to choose in God and for God.

Here Is the first practical assertion of the right of the people not only to choose but to Limit the powers of their rulers, an assertion which lies at the foundation of the American, system. There Is no reference to a "dread sovereign," no reservation of deference due to any class, not even to the class to which the speaker himself belonged. Each Individual was to exercise his rights " according to the blessed will and law of God," but he was to be responsible to God alone for his fulfillment of the obligation. The whole contains the germ of the idea of the commonwealth, and it was developed by his hearers into the constitution of 1689. It Is on the banks of the Connecticut, under the mighty preaching of Thomas Hooker and in the constitution to which he gave life, if not form, that we draw the first breath of that atmosphere which Is now so familiar to us. The birthplace of American democracy Is Hartford.

From early times, certainly since 1656, Connecticut has placed upon her common seal vines, to represent her towns, at first three for the original towns ; then one for each town ; then, as the towns became more numerous, the original three again. The stripes on the flag of the United

States, increased to fifteen until after the war of 1812, are a curious parallel. With the vines was the significant motto of the commonwealth, at first on a scroll held by a hand coming out of a cloud, afterwards on a scroll below the vines: QUI transtulit SUSTINET. The motto was not meant as the record of an historical fact alone, or as an exclusion of the agency of man from the attainment of liberty. The spirit, if not the translation, of it is in the third of Hooker's " Uses " of his lesson, his " exhortation — to persuade us, as God hath given us liberty, to take it." This his flock proceeded to do in their constitution.

In the preamble, the inhabitants and residents of Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, desiring to establish an orderly and decent government according to God, associated and conjoined themselves to be as one public state or commonwealth, for the purposes of maintaining and preserving the liberty and purity of the gospel, the discipline of the churches, and the orderly conduct of civil affairs according to law. There is no mention or hint of royal, parliamentary, or proprietary authority in any part of the constitution, or in the forms of oaths for governor, magistrates, and constables which make an appendix to it. The ecclesiastical excrescence upon it, probably inevitable at the time, but absolutely contrary to the spirit of the whole instrument, was to remain and trouble the commonwealth until the political system came fully up to its own original standard in 1818,

The constitution gave the general court power to " admit of freemen ; " but the right of suffrage was given unequivocally, by a subsequent addition, to the first section, to admitted freemen who had taken the oath of fidelity to the commonwealth ; and in 1648, to settle the matter, the court declared that it understood by " admitted inhabitants" those who had been admitted by a town. The towns, therefore, retained complete political control of their own affairs. No attempt was made to define the powers of the towns, for the reason that they, being preexistent and theoretically independent bodies, had all powers not granted to the commonwealth, To avoid any possible question, the general court, at its meeting in the following October, passed a series of orders, securing to the towns the powers of selling their lands ; of choosing their own officers; of passing local laws with penalties ; of assessing, taxing, and distraining for nonpayment; of choosing a local court of three, five, or seven persons, with power to hear and determine causes arising between inhabitants of the town, and involving not more than forty shillings; of recording titles, bonds, sales and mortgages of lands within the town ; and of managing all probate business arising within the town. The really new point introduced by the " orders " was the direction to the towns to choose certain of their chief inhabitants, not exceeding seven, to act as magistrates. Out of this grew rapidly the

executive board of the towns known as " selectmen," who have ever since held almost a dictatorship in their towns during the Intervals between meetings of their towns, limited by the force of public opinion, by commonwealth statutes, and by personal responsibility. These orders are often called an " incorporation " of the towns by the general court. The word can hardly be defended. All these privileges belonged to the towns already ; and the orders of October 10, 1639, are much more like the first ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, a Bill of Rights, originating in the jealousy of the political units. Indeed, there Is hardly a step in the proceedings in Connecticut in 1639 which, does not tempt one to digress into the evident parallels in the action on the national stage one hundred and fifty years later. Like causes produced curiously similar effects.

Each town was to choose annually, by vote of the freemen, four persons as deputies to the general court, unless the number of towns should increase so as to make a reduction necessary. Each year there was to be a court of election on the second Thursday of April (afterwards changed to May), to choose a governor and six magistrates. The choice of magistrates was limited to those nominated at some preceding session of the court, each town making not more than two nominations, and" the general court adding as many as it chose. At the court of election, the freemen brought in

paper ballots stating their choice for governor for the following year, a plurality vote electing. It seems to have been the intention to make tins election a pure democracy, in which each voter gave in his ballot in person. As population spread further from Hartford, the custom of sending ballots by proxies must have grown up ; for the court order of 1660, which proposed a change in the governor's term of office, suggested to the " remote Plantations, that use to send Proxies at the election, by their Deputies," that they should vote on their ballots for or against the proposed repeal. After 1670, the regulations adopted by the assembly, to govern the manner of taking these proxies, amounted practically to election laws, to be enforced by the town selectmen. The governor was to be a church-member, and originally no one was to be chosen to the office two years in succession. In 1660, the general court, desiring to retain John Winthrop, Jr., as governor, proposed to the freemen to abolish the restriction of reelection, and the freemen did so.

The six magistrates were the germ of the future senate of the commonwealth, but at first they can hardly be considered a separate chamber. Their " magestraticall powers " were quite undefined, and, until the charter, may be taken to cover not only judicial functions, but such duties as the general court saw fit to add thereto from time to time. In general, they were district

judges, meeting from time to time in bank, with legislative powers when jolned by the governor and deputies, At the court of election, the secretary for the time being read the nominations for the office of magistrate in the order in which they had been given him. As each was read, the freemen handed In either blank ballots counting against the candidate, or ballots containing his name and counting for him. The balloting continued until six names had obtained a majority of the votes cast. If six magistrates were not thus obtained, the number was filled up by taking those names which had received the largest number of votes in their favor.

On the second Thursday of September, the governor, magistrates, and deputies were to meet as a general court, " for makeing of lawes," otherwise expressed by the phrase " to agitate the affaires of the commonwealth." This body was to pass laws of general interest, to dispose of unappropriated lands, to act as a court of last resort, to decide on. the amount of taxation, and to apportion it among the towns on the report of an apportionment committee on which each town was to be equally represented.

In the little town republics, the ancient and honorable office of constable was the connecting link between commonwealth and town. The constable published the commonwealth laws to his town, kept the " publike peace " of the town and

commonwealth, levied the town's share of the commonwealth taxation, and went " from howse to liowse " to notify the freemen of meetings of the general court, and of the time and place of elections of deputies thereto, " The parish," says Selden, u makes the constable; and, when the constable is made, he governs the parish." He might even become the instrument of a legal revolution, in case the governor and magistrates refused to call the regular meetings of the general court, or, on petition of the freemen, a special meeting. In that case, the constitution, provided that the freemen were to instruct the constables to order elections of deputies, who were to constitute a general court themselves, excluding the governor and magistrates. This power never was exercised, but it is an extraordinary feature in constitutional law. It was the Connecticut mode of ensuring recognition of the direct representatives of the towns.

This constitution was the first conscious and deliberate attempt to found a commonwealth democracy on this continent, and it lasted in reality until 1818, for the charter changed it in no essential point. It was a system of complete popular control, of frequent elections by the people, and of minute local government. It remained, throughout confiscations, modifications, and refusals of charters in other colonies, the exemplar of the rights of self-government which all the English

colonies gradually came to aim. at more or less consciously. In later times the length of service of its officers was again and again cited by Jefferson to prove that, in a real democracy, annual elections were no bar to prolonged tenure of office. The first election of officers under the constitution was held April 11, 1889. John Haynes was chosen governor. Six magistrates were elected. One of the magistrates, Roger Lud-low, was chosen deputy governor; another, Edward Hopkins, secretary; and another, Thomas Wells, treasurer; and these and twelve deputies, or " committees," made up the general court. Until 1660, it was a tolerably steady rule that the governor of one year was the deputy governor of the next, and vice versa. In this period of about twenty years Haynes was governor eight times, and deputy governor five times; and Hopkins was governor seven times, and deputy governor six times. In 1657 John Winthrop began his term of service as governor, which lasted, through the removal of the provision against reflection, for eighteen years, the longest term of service reached by any of Connecticut's chief magistrates. In the next century, Gurdon Saltonstall held the office for seventeen years, 170T-24, Nathan Gold holding the office of deputy governor during all but the first year of Saltonstall's term. Saltonstall was followed by Joseph Talcott, who also held the office of governor for seventeen years, 1724-

41; having the same deputy governor, Jonathan Law, throughout his entire term. Law succeeded Talcott; and thereafter, until 1818, the rule was that a governor held office until he died or refused to serve longer, when the deputy governor took his place for a like term, Jonathan Trumbull, senior, was governor, 1769-84 ; and his son, of the same name, held the office 1798-1809.

Reelection to other offices was never prohibited, and long terms of service in them have been almost too numerous for special mention, John Al-lyn, for example, became secretary In 1684 and held the office for twenty-eight years, Influencing the policy of the colony strongly during the whole period, A more remarkable case Is that of the Whitings, who held the office of treasurer for seventy years, — Joseph Whiting 1679-1718, and Ms son and successor, John Whiting, 1718-49. Even this family record was outdone by the Wyllyses in the office of secretary, Hezekiah. Wyllys held the office 1712-35 ; his son and successor, George Wyllys, 1785-96; and Samuel Wyllys, George's son and successor, 1796-1810, the office having remained in the family but two years short of a century. Length of tenure was the rule In local offices as well. In. the first two hundred and fifty years of its history, Hartford has had but twenty town clerks. One of them, John Allyn, held the office, by annual elections, for thirty-seven years, and another, George Wyllys,

for fifty years. Cases of this kind were exceed- ingly common throughout the commonwealth, William Hillhouse, of New London, served in the general court for fifty-eight years, so that, as elections to the lower house of that body were semiannual, he was sent by his town to one hundred and sixteen successive sessions.

It must be admitted that much of this permanency in democracy was due to the nature of the people ; but a large share ought to be credited to their institutions. The people, fully satisfied with the complete control over the government which their constitution had secured to them, were content to allow circumstances to develop the men best suited to government. At the same time, the intense personal interest felt by every citizen in the commonwealth gave all of them a common motive, sharpened their intelligence, united their force, and carried the commonwealth safely through storms which would otherwise have been fatal. So much, at least, Connecticut owes to the constitution of 1639.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NEW HAVEN COLONY.

the settlements of New Haven, Milford, and Guilford probably had their origin in closely connected movements at home, though they took place at different times. Every indication to be drawn from the records shows common, characteristics of persons, methods, beliefs, and purposes.

The two most prominent men in the New Haven party of settlers were John Davenport (otherwise Damport or Dampard) and Theophilus Eaton, both Londoners, at least by adoption. Davenport was a Coventry man, an Oxford student, curate of St. Lawrence Jewry, and vicar of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, London, His inclinations seem to have been at first those of a moderately Low Church man, in the modern sense ; but Land's persecutions had converted him Into a " dangerous " Puritan by 1633, when he resigned and went to Holland, His acquaintance among Londoners of the middle class and of his own way of thinking was extensive ; and It was from this class that the material strength,of the New Haven settlement was drawn. Its leading representative was

Theophilus Eaton, an Oxfordshire man by birth, and a London merchant of sufficient prominence to have served in some semi-diplomatic capacity at the Danish court. In some way now unknown, the tentacles of the movement had run out into Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, and Kent; and these counties furnished the bulk of the purely agricultural population. The Hertfordshire families seem to have tended to Milford, and the men of Kent to Gull-ford, while the Yorkshiremen found New Haven most congenial.

The first or New Haven party of settlers, mainly Londoners, with Davenport and Eaton as leaders, landed at Boston, July 26, 1687. The wealth, influence, and coherence of the party made it a desirable acquisition, and the Bay colony made every effort to settle it within the jurisdiction, Many reasons combined to make the efforts fruitless. Theological disputes, notably the Hutchin-son controversy, had harassed Massachusetts; and there was no great promise, to the critical eyes of the new-comers, of healing them. The peculiarity of Massachusetts, as distinguished from Connecticut, was the supremacy of the commonwealth over the towns, of church - members over non-church-members, and of influential classes over the church-members. This constitution of affairs was not so objectionable to the Davenport and Eaton party, for they followed it closely in their own colony, as the fact that in Massachusetts

They would form only one or two towns, and would be under the control of the commonwealth, whereas they desired to be the commonwealth and control the subordinate civil divisions. They had no desire to assume the place of the commonwealth's opposition, from which the Connecticut settlers had just escaped. Again, they came to Boston at a time when the newly opened Connecticut territory was a common topic of conversation ; and a " fine opening " has always been an almost irresistible temptation to the race. Finally, the chase of the Pequots along the Connecticut coast toward New Netherland had taken place within a month of their arrival; and who could pass through the southern borders of Connecticut in June without sounding their praises to his friends at Hartford and the Bay ? The newcomers seem to have decided very quickly that they would not remain in Massachusetts; that they would go to the new territory; and that their settlement should be placed somewhere on the coast.

In the autumn of 1637, Eaton, with some of Ms party, explored the northern shore of Long Island Sound, and pitched on Quinnipiack, an Indian district having a good harbor, as the best seat for a colony, A hut was built, and a few men were left to try the winter climate by personal experience. The rest of the party remained in various Massachusetts towns, and even increased their

numbers by accessions from their neighbors. The venture had a commercial as well as a politico-religious aspect. Each of the " free planters" had invested stocks, varying from Eaton's <£3,000 down to the ordinary £10 share. Some of these u free planters" never came to New Haven or New England, investing money only ; and, on the other hand, some Massachusetts men entered, their names, and even promised their personal presence to the venture.

The company set sail from Boston March 80, 1638. Quinnipiack was reached in about a fortnight ; and the memorable first sermon was preached by Davenport, April 18, under an oak-tree, probably from Matt. iv. 1: " Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil." It is a pity that no note of the discourse has been preserved, for the obvious application of the text to the situation of the hearers, the constant temptation to consider every unpleasant incident, or even the consequences of their own errors, as the intervention of their personal enemy and antagonist, the Devil, would go very far to explain or palliate many otherwise inexplicable events in their history.

Such incidents were not slow in coming. The season was so bad that the crops failed and had to be replanted ; and a violent earthquake, June 1, seemed sent to daunt their spirits and drive them out of the territory into which they had intruded.

If any of these tilings moved them, it was probably only to a more stubborn resolution against Satanic power and Indian powowings. Their determina- tion to stand their ground was not relaxed. On the contrary, and as if to deal fairly even with their spiritual enemies, they went on to complete their title to the soil by purchase from the Indians. On November 24 and December 11, 1633, Davenport, Eaton, " and others " bought the title from Momaugin and Montowese respectively, with their subordinate chiefs. Subsequent neighboring purchases made up, roughly speaking, the present county of New Haven, excluding the narrow strip on its northern border. For all this the price paid was one dozen each of coats, spoons, hatchets, hoes and porringers, two dozen knives, and four cases of French knives and " sizers " to one, and a dozen coats to the other, with a vague promise to both of protection against their enemies, and a reservation of the Indian right to hunt and fish on the ceded territory. Some may think that this was driving a sharp bargain with the adversary; but, all things considered, it must be admitted that the Indians received all that the territory was worth to them. The colony purchases did not stop here: purchase was the colony's consistent policy. The Indian district of Wapoweage (subsequently Milford) was bought February 12,1638 (9); Menunkatuck (Guilford), September 29, 1639; Rippowams (Stamford), in July, 1640; and Yennieock (South-

old, L. I.), some time In 1640. These four plantations, subsequently developed into towns, with Branford, made up mainly of the purchase of December 11,1638, and the parent settlement of New Haven, finally constituted the New Haven commonwealth.

New parties entered the colony from England throughout the autumn and winter of 1688-39, so that there were three ministers present—Davenport, Rev. Henry Whitefield, and Rev. Peter Prudden, with congregations more or less organized; and another, Rev. Samuel Eaton, a brother of Theophilus, who seems to have had no following. Homogeneous as this settlement was, there were evidently Interests which would impel segregation, and it was decided that the Whitefield party should take Guilford, the Prudden party Milford, and Samuel Eaton Branford, if he could obtain settlers. The latter enterprise was a failure, and Eaton was a resident of New Haven for four years after 1640, then returning to England and dying there in 1664, The Milford and Guilford ventures were successful during the summer; and they were from the beginning so definite In organization that, though they were In New Haven in June, and afterwards followed the ecclesiastical and civil constitution then adopted, they did not intrude upon the proceedings which led to it.

More is known of the early topography and appearance of New Haven than of Hartford.

Atwater and Lambert give maps of early New Haven and Milford. The houses of the early leaders, at least, are pretty accurately described, and something Is known of their Interiors. Contemporaries were struck with the unaccustomed luxury of the New Haven houses. Some of them had tapestry hangings ; and Governor Eaton's had Turkey carpets, tapestry carpets and rugs. It Is certain, at any rate, that the colony was spared many of the privations incident to most of the New England settlements; and that, until the unhappy Issue of the Delaware Bay settlement, which brought poverty Into the colony, its affairs were unusually prosperous.

Soon after their arrival at Quinnipiack, the Davenport and Eaton party had framed what was called a " plantation covenant," Nothing is known of its terms, except that it was short and simple, merely engaging that the Scriptures should govern their proceedings not only in the gathering and ordering of the church, hut In the choice of magistrates and other officers, the making and repeal of laws, the allotment of Inheritances, and all other civil affairs. This, to be sure, furnished the lines on which the future constitution was to be constructed. It had, also, peculiar effects which deserve notice, though they may not be apparent on. the surface. It practically abolished the excrescences, such as entails and primogeniture, which had grown up on the English common law ; it

was almost, if not quite, a declaration of independence : and it made it certain that nothing short of direct and overmastering force could make the commonwealth anything but a republic. But it was yet without form or consistence; and in spite of its Scripture provisions, the real work of constitution-making by the settlers did not begin until

" They in Newman's barn laid down

Scripture foundations for the town."

The planters met June 4, 1639, in a large barn belonging to Mr. Robert Newman, to settle a constitution. Rev. Mr. Davenport opened the matter by preaching from Prov. ix. 1: " Wisdom hath builded her bouse ; she hath hewn out her seven pillars." The application of the text to the business in hand was that, in a wise ordering of church or state, it was essential to rest on seven approved brethren, to whom the others were to be added. It is not difficult to see, on a general survey of the whole proceeding, what was the underlying purport of this proposition; for, if the constitution of Connecticut looked of necessity to a government by the many, that of New Haven had as strong a disposition to secure government by the chosen few.

After the service, Mr. Davenport submitted six " foundamentall orders " to the planters before him; and as each was adopted by a show of hands, the whole became the constitution of New Haven. The orders were as follows : —

1. That the Scriptures hold forth a perfect rule for men in their family, church and commonwealth affairs.

2. That the rules of Scripture were to goYern the gathering and ordering of the church, the choice of magistrates and officers, the making and repeal of laws, the dividing of allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature.

3. That all " free planters " were to become such with the resolution and intention to be admitted into church fellowship as soon as God should fit them thereunto.

4. That civil order was to be such as should conduce to securing the purity and peace of the ordinances to the free planters and their posterity.

5. That church-members only were to be " free burgesses," and were to choose from their own number magistrates and officers to make laws, divide inheritances, decide cases at law, and transact all public business. This alone seems to have met opposition. It called upon those free planters who were not church-members to surrender political as well as ecclesiastical power into the hands of the comparative minority who were church-members, and to make the surrender permanent and fundamental. One man. probably Rev, Samuel Eaton, agreed to the general principle that voters and magistrates should be men fearing God, and that the church was the likeliest place to find such ; " only at this he stuck, that free planters ought

not to give this power out of their hands," The vote left the objector in a minority of one. The number thus disfranchised in New Haven was probably a majority; in Guilford, nearly half ; in Milford, but ten out of forty-four, and six of these were admitted within a year or two.

6. That the free burgesses, or church-members, were to choose twelve of their number, and that these twelve were to choose the " seven pillars " to begin the church. The twelve selected were Eaton, Davenport, Robert Newman, Matthew Gilbert, Richard Malbon, Nathaniel Turner, Ezekiel Cheevers, Thomas Fugill, John Ponderson, William Andrews and Jeremiah Dixon, all noted names in early New Haven history. The names given number but eleven. The reason for the deficiency is unknown. It may perhaps be found in a note on the record that one of the twelve was accused of extortion, confessed it with grief, and made restitution. His name may have been left out and never supplied.

A provision was added to the " foundamentalls" that no one be admitted as a free planter until he had signed them. This was to make the peculiarities of the constitution permanent.

Eaton, Davenport, Newman, Gilbert, Fugill, Ponderson and Dixon were chosen as the " seven pillars." These then entered into covenant with one another (August 22), this step constituting the church, and proceeded to gather the other

brethren to them and it, They were thus a church before they were a civil government, and the organized church organized the government. On the same day the church at Milford was gathered in the same way.

The seven pillars met for the first time as a general court October 16, 1639. They elected Eaton " magistrate : " he was not called governor until the full development of the commonwealth in 1648, Newman, Gilbert, Turner and Fugill were chosen deputy magistrates, and Fugill secretary and notary public. It was agreed that future elections should be held in the last week of October yearly, and that the word of God should be the only rule for the guidance of judges and public officers. Popular control, carefully limited as to the general court, was as nearly as possible excluded from the periodical meetings of the magistrates' court held by Eaton and his four deputies. Even after 1648, when it became the Particular Court of New Haven, it was rather a court of both civil and criminal equity than anything else.

The republic of New Haven, thus constituted, had very little official communication with dependent or associated towns for some four years. Mil-ford with forty-four free planters, and Guilford with forty, were settled in 1689, in November and August respectively, under governments carefully modelled on that of New Haven, Most of the Milford settlers were dissatisfied Wethersfield

people, who had left the Connecticut Jurisdiction to reach just such a social and ecclesiastical system, as that of New Haven ; while the Guilford people were absolutely in sympathy with Davenport even before their departure from England, Each had, its church, gathered to its seven pillars, who also acted as a legislature and court, and held the town lands in trust for the town. The separate life of New Haven may therefore stand as a fair representative of the others.

The lands belonging to the towns seem to have been distributed by common agreement or by lot, and with entire impartiality. The minister was given a first choice ; and it was very natural that a man so distinguished among his fellows as Eaton was honored with a choice next after the minister. The leading military man, Captain Turner, and the deacons, were given a similar privilege, so that they might choose places convenient for the fulfillment of their duties. Thereafter the division bears a curious resemblance to the distribution of lands under the village community system. The limited area which was meant to be the real town was divided into home lots, and the outlying lands of the township, as distinguished from the town, were divided into corresponding plots of arable and meadow lands. Home lots and outlying plots were of different sizes, corresponding to the various known gradations of contribution to the common stock. In each grade of contribution, the

contributors received share and share alike, though the higher grades of contributors had to be first satisfied. But " grades of contribution" did not depend simply on money values. In the distribution of January, 1640, each settler received five acres of upland and meadow for each hundred pounds of his estate, and for each head in his family two and a half acres of upland and half an acre of meadow; " and in the necke an acre to every hundred pound, and half an acre to every head." In the distribution of September, 1640, twenty acres of out-land were assigned to every " hundred pounds of estate given in," and two and a half acres for " every head ; " and it was decided that each of the small lots in the town should have four acres of planting ground to each lot, and one acre to every head. As a restriction on the eagerness for acquisition, taxes were imposed from the beginning,— fourpence an acre per annum for upland and meadow, and twopence for second-division lands. Finally, no sales to outsiders were to be made without the approval of the general court; and common lands, including clay-pits, were reserved to the commonwealth.

These " common lands " were held under much the same conditions in the New Haven and Connecticut towns as in those of Massachusetts, though the materials for study are not so abundant. There was no hasty scramble from ship to shore, no location wherever choice and opportunity might

lead a family to settle without Interfering with prior rights. On the contrary, every step was ordered and directed by the voice of the town, expressed in that assembly which has always been the mainspring of the New England system. The voice of the town either chose each man's location for him, or fixed the principles on which it was to be chosen. Here the parallel with any form of the village community must stop, for the New England settlers had come from England thoroughly imbued with the idea of individual property in land; and the land, when once allotted, became purely individual property, subject to alienation or devise, without return to the common stock. But there was necessarily a certain amount of land, larger or smaller, which was not needed for immediate allotment; and the rules of the community were pretty rigidly applied to this. It was the property of all, and was at first regulated by the town authorities. In New Haven, January 16, 1642 (3), it was decided that the common land known as " The Neck " should be a " stinted common" for cattle, and should be fenced and fitted with gates. The owner of twelve acres could put in a horse, of six acres an ox, of three acres a two-year-old steer, and of two acres a calf. As allotments had not depended on wealth alone, but on " heads " as well, this gave every man a share in the common. So a Norwalk town meeting of May 30, 1655, voted that " all

dry cattle, excepting two year old heifers, shall be herded together on the other side of the Nor-walk river, and there kept by the owners of the cattle; every man .keeping according to his proportion of the cattle there herded," And all the town records of early years contain provisions allowing the inhabitants to fell timber in the town " commonage " at particular seasons, or to cany away windfalls.

As long as the town commonage was large and comparatively valueless, its affairs were managed by the town meeting. As its area became smaller and more valuable, and as new-comers crowded into the town, the management fell into the hands of an association of proprietors, composed of descendants of the original settlers, and interminable lawsuits often varied the monotony of the management. All through the eighteenth century, the efforts of the " new-comers " to get a share of the common lands made up a large part of local politics ; and, during the Revolution period, the same question underlies much of the difference between " Sons of Liberty " and " Tories." Finally, the commonage being reduced by sales to a minimum of land poor enough to bankrupt any corporation which should undertake to manage it in earnest, the association of proprietors dies out and disappears, or becomes an hereditary social organization.

A pronounced distinction between New Haven

and Connecticut was the inquisitorial character assumed by the former from the beginning of Its existence, It Is true that much of what appears to be Inquisitorial proceeding was due to the peculiar theory which governed the constitution of the legislative bodies of New England: the legislatures were also courts, and their proceedings were interspersed with a vast number of cases which would now be thought beneath the attention of a commonwealth government, — cases of lewdness, drunkenness In servants, impertinence, promiscuous kissing, etc. But the difference, which is plainly perceptible from, any reading of the respective records, is that such matters were rather matters of business with the Connecticut authorities, to be dealt with and got rid of as rapidly as justice would permit; while to the New Haven magistracy they were matters of deep and serious import, to be probed to the bottom, with scientific accuracy in every moral and psychological detail. Every New Haven sentence bristles at least with implications of the moral law. " Never elsewhere, I believe," says Dr. Bacon, u has the, world seen magistrates who felt more deeply that they were God's ministers executing God's justice." All this may be admitted without impairing the belief that this attempted personification of Divine justice had its drawbacks, It would be unjust to say, as is generally assumed, that it resulted in Draconic severity of punish

ment: New Haven punishments, as a rule, were not at all severe. It would be unfaithful not to say that it resulted in a meddlesomeness which must have done more moral harm than good, and in the end did. much to overthrow the government itself. " Goodman Hunt and his wife, for keeping the councils of the said William Harding, baking him a pasty and plum-cakes, and keeping company with him on the Lord's day, and she suffering Harding to kiss her," were ordered to be sent out of town " within one month after the date hereof [March 1, 1643], yea, in a shorter time if any miscarriage be found in. them." While the New Haven magistracy was sitting in solemn labor to bring forth such a mouse as this, its Connecticut rival was actively engaged in real commonwealth business, every step of which made its ultimate supremacy more assured.

The peculiar cast of mind of the New Haven magistracy has done injustice to the good name of the early town. Its records of trials contain a mass of filth from which the Connecticut records are comparatively free. Some think that the missing records, covering the years 1649-53, were even worse, and were destroyed by the authorities to protect the town's reputation. But the trials which remain really speak highly for the morals of the town. The amount of real uncleanness brought to light is singularly small; the " evidence " on which other convictions were based

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would not be even admitted in a modern court of law ; and the whole makes up a record rather of the diseased suspicions of the magistrates than of the criminality of their people. Most of the "criminals" better deserved, a medical than a u magistratical " examination ; and their cases are merely a demonstration of the necessity of the recognized rules of evidence, not of the immorality of the early Puritans, as dissenting authorities are so fond of representing them.

Sumptuary laws were attempted in New Haven, as in Connecticut, and with as little success in one as in the other. Codes were drawn up to regulate prices of labor and materials, but they were probably meant mainly to regulate the rates at which taxes should be paid to the commonwealth in kind, in materials or labor. So far as they were meant to regulate individual contracts, they were evidently a failure, and they were soon repealed. Rules against excess in drinking and in apparel were also attempted, with the usual want of success ; and in their failure, as in the matter of "watching and warding," there are indications that kissing is not the only thing that goes by favor, John Jenner, accused, February 5, 1639 (40), of being drunk with strong waters, was acquitted, " itt appearing to be of infirmyty and occasioned by the extretnyty of the colde."

It needed but a few years for the little settlement to show its consciousness of independent ex-

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istence. As soon as the establishment of houses and streets had given it a corporate appearance and feeling, its name was changed, September 1, 1640, to New Haven (commonly then .Newhaven), Another step, though abortive, shows the spirit of the people. It was ordered, December 25, 1641, " that a free school shall be set up in this town." Davenport was to ascertain the amount of money which would be needed for it, and to draw up rules for the institution. Contemporary expressions go to show that the intent was not to establish a mere school, in the modern sense of the word, but to lay a foundation which could develop easily into some such institution as the powerful university with which New Haven's name is now so closely linked. It should not be forgotten that, at least in spirit, the establishment of Harvard by the commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay had a contemporary rival in the straggling little settlement on the shores of Long Island Sound. But for the different circumstances of the two peoples, and a deference to Harvard's appeals for support, their two universities would have been born almost together, and the two hundred and fiftieth anniversaries of Harvard and Yale would have been almost coincident.

When the separate existence of New Haven had lasted some five years, her government developed into a confederation. Many reasons might be assigned for such a result, The towns which

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had been founded on the New Haven purchases had been separated from the parent stem long enough to make Mr. Davenport's opinion something less than all-sufficient, and to develop a higher regard for the opinion of their own ministers ; for there was a strong ecclesiastical tap-root to town independence, even under the New Haven system. Again, it may well be imagined that men like Goodyear and Leete had not been blind to the growth and possibilities of the Connecticut colony. New Haven claimed only what she had bought: Connecticut claimed every square foot on which a Pequot had ever collected tribute. If New Haven was to maintain her solidarity against her rival's indefinite and penetrating claims, it must be by turning a nominal hegemony into a real commonwealth. Closely connected with this point was the proposed New England Union. If New Haven were left out of it, she was practically subordinated to her rival in the new territory. If she was to present her claim to admission, it must be with all the prestige derivable from a cluster of allied, not dependent, towns. It is significant, perhaps, that the first suggestion of the change comes in the appointment, April 6, 1643, of commissioners to the New England Union "for the jurisdiction of New Haven." It is quite probable that the leading men of the various towns had already agreed on the general form which the " jurisdiction " was to take, but it was not settled

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until October, owing to difficulties in the case of Milford.

During Milford's four years of nominal dependence, but real independence, it had gone so far as to admit six men as " free burgesses," or voters, although they were not church-members. With the rise of the commonwealth proposition, the admission of these six Milford burgesses became a great international question, which cost a whole summer of negotiation before it could be settled. It was finally agreed that the six should continue to vote in peace so long as they remained in Mil-ford, but that they should not hold office, and that Milford should never again scandalize the other towns by thus violating their common law.

Harmony having thus been restored, a constitution for the cornmon wealth was agreed upon, October 27, 1643, by a general court, consisting of Governor Eaton, now first so called; Deputy-governor Goodyear ; three magistrates ; and eight deputies, two each from New Haven, Milford, Guilford, and Stamford. The features of the new constitution were not essentially different from that of 1639, Free burgesses, or voters, were to be church-members only, except the six Milford anomalies. Only church-members were to hold office. The rights of " free planters," not church-members, were limited to " their Inheritance and to commerce," Each town was to have its particular court, elected by the burgesses, dealing

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with causes of not more than £20, or, in criminal cases, involving no greater punishment than " stocking and whipping" or a fine of £5, with right of appeal to the general court. In the election of governor and other commonwealth officers, voters need not go to New Haven, but might vote by proxy. The general court consisting of governor, deputy governor, magistrates and two deputies from each town, was to meet at New Haven twice a year, on the first Wednesday in April and the last Wednesday in October, the latter being the court of election. The magis-trates were to meet separately, as a court of mag, istrates, on the Monday preceding the stated general court meetings, to try weighty and capital eases or appeals from town courts, and to perform most of the functions of a grand jury. Ordinary trial by jury was not a part of the New Haven system.

The general court was to provide for the maintenance of the purity of religion, and " suppress the contrary ; " to make and repeal laws, and require the execution of them ; to call magistrates to account for misdemeanors ; to impose upon the inhabitants an oath of fidelity and subjection to the laws ; to settle and levy taxes ; and to try causes on appeal from any of the other courts. Its proceedings were to be in accordance with the Scriptures, and no law was to pass but by a vote of a majority of the magistrates and a majority of the deputies.

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At the next stated meeting In April, 1844, it was ordered that "the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses," should be considered binding on all. offenders, and should be a rule to all the courts of the jurisdiction, " till they be branched out into particulars hereafter." These are probably the provisions which have clone most to develop the current notions of the criminal code of New Haven. They have very probably reflected upon the sister colony as well, and, since the provisions of the Connecticut criminal code were like those of New Haven, though without their expressed basis, both have helped to give currency to Mr. Peters's absurd ..code of " Blue Laws." A general reference to " the Mosaic code of Mew Haven " has usually been held sufficient rebutter to any attempt to argue against the Blue Law myth. Nor is the reason far to seek. It is not a violent assumption that the phrase, " the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses," has not, to the average reader or hearer of the present time, that clear-cut significance which it had to those who first used it, or which the death statutes of a modern state have to the criminal lawyer. It is true that the New Haven general statute, agreeing generally with those of Connecticut and Massachusetts, made some fifteen offenses capital crimes, — murder, treason, perjury aimed at life, kidnapping, bestiality, sodomy, adultery, incest, rape, blasphemy in its highest

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form, Idolatry, witchcraft, " presumptuous" Sab-bath-breaking, the third conviction for burglary committed on the Lord's day, and rebellion against parents. A formidable catalogue truly. But why is it the only one to be brought to the bar ? Mackintosh, speaking in the English House of Commons so late as March 2,1819, said: " I hold In my hand a list of those offenses which at this moment are capital, in number two hundred and twenty-three." The New Haven and Connecticut colonists, by a single stroke of legislation more than a century and a half before, had reduced their list of capital offenses to fifteen. If such a reduction, with hardly an execution for any of them, be not considered a long step In the history of law reform, law reformers are hard to satisfy.

The government established in 1648 continued without essential change until its final absorption by Connecticut. Two towns, however, were added to the four already named. Southold, L. I., bought in 1640, was admitted as a town in 1649. It was at first called by Its Indian name, Yennicott or Yennicock; and Its English name, Southold or Southhold, perhaps signified the place of strength to the south of New Haven. It extended some forty miles west of Orient Point. Totoket, or Branford, was a part of the second purchase of 1638. Samuel Eaton having failed to settle it, it was granted in 1640 to another dissatisfied Wethersfield company, headed by Wil-

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liam Swayne, and Branford was admitted as a town in 1851, In 1844 It had been reinforced by Rev, Abraham Pierson's church from Southampton, L, I., which sought a more congenial home under the New Haven jurisdiction when its town joined Connecticut. But Pierson's church was not to escape thus. Within twenty years, the union was consummated, and the church again broke away from Connecticut and founded Newark, N. J., a settlement which has given to New Jersey the mass of the Connecticut family names which have appeared in her history. Hunting-ton, L. I., also applied to be admitted in 1858 and 1659, but was refused because of her demand that her local court should try all her civil cases and all criminal cases not capital.

Six towns, therefore, — New Haven, Milford, Guilford, Stamford, Southold and Branford, — made up the New Haven jurisdiction during its short history. With the exception of Stamford and Southold, the commonwealth lay immediately around New Haven. Its smaller members are now villages which offer little that is striking to the traveler or visitor. Time was when they were members of an almost independent republic whose hopes were high, and whose history serves at least to show that the New England town system cannot thrive in an unfriendly soil.