CHAPTER VIII.

THE SAYBROOK ATTEMPT AND ITS FAILURE.

THE Saybrook colony was the offspring, in one sense, of the English king's committal to the policy of " thorough." There was in the kingdom, in addition to the comparatively helpless lower-class victims of Laud, an unknown number of gentlemen of good family who were thoroughly indoctrinated with Puritanism, or with kindred forms of dissent. These had as yet escaped serious persecution, partly through family and social influences, partly through the English reserve which, by checking any too violent expressions of dissent, had enabled family and social influences to have their full effect. About 1684-35 there were strong indications that the period of peace for this class was approaching its limit. Wentworth, in Ireland, was constructing the covered way by which the liberties of England were to be assailed. The heart of all Protestant Europe was yet faint and sick at the hideous atrocities of Tilly's musketeers at the sack of Magdeburg : was any more mercy to be expected by English cities at the hands of Wentworth's Irish musketeers ? And who was

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to suppose that the supple body known as a parliament under Elizabeth and James would take the law Into its own hands against diaries ? Or that Puritanism would develop a soldiery before which the king's men would faint and fly? Patient and reserved men forgot that other Englishmen were as reserved, as patient and as dangerous as they, and concluded that hope was gone from England, and that there was no refuge but across the Atlantic.

It may be that the supposititious, or at least unverifiable grant to Warwick by the Council of Plymouth in 1680 was a pious fraud, designed to provide some such refuge, if the fear of confiscation of charter rights should deter Massachusetts from receiving refugees. The difficulty is to understand why the declaration of a baseless claim by the Say and Sele patentees, in the country and during the life of the original owner, should not have been met by a prompt contradiction. This is the strongest secondary evidence of the validity of the grant to Warwick in 1630, and its transfer to the Say and. Sele Company In 1631, - that in 1684-35 the latter patentees made active and public preparations to enforce their claims to Connecticut and to remove there themselves, without exciting any complaint or opposition on the part of the Plymouth Council or their later grantees. That broad excuse, "the confusion of the times,"

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may serve as a partial but hardly as an entirely satisfactory explanation.

John Winthrop, Sen., the governor of Massachusetts, had led the great Puritan, migration to that colony in 1680. His son, John Winthrop, Jr., did not reach Boston until October, 1635. He was then a young man of twenty-nine, of good natural parts, well improved at Cambridge and Dublin and by travel on the continent, and he had already shown that philosophical, equable and judicial temperament which made him a trusted leader of men throughout his life. One of the bitterest critics of the early Massachusetts system hesitates before the beauties of the younger Winthrop's character, and calls him " perhaps the brightest ornament of New England Puritanism." His father's connection with the Say and Sele associates must have been close, and they must have seen in the son the qualities they needed. It thus happened that the son, on his way to Boston, was diverted into an Interest In Connecticut, which finally made him more vitally important to that colony than the father had ever been to Massachusetts.

Articles of agreement were entered Into July 7, 1635, between John Winthrop, Jr., of the one part, and Viscount Say and Sele, Sir Arthur Has-selling, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Henry Lawrence, Henry Darley and George Fenwick of the other. Robert, Lord Brooke, did not sign, but was a party

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in interest. Winthrop was to be fully compensated for his time and trouble, was to act as " governor of the river Connecticut In New England, and of the harbor and places adjoining," for one year, and was to build a fort at the mouth of the river, with a garrison of fifty men, reserving 1,000 or 1,500 acres of good ground, near the fort, for its maintenance. His commission as governor was signed, sealed and delivered to him July 13.

Winthrop arrived at Boston just a week before the first considerable migration to the Connecticut Valley, It is said that the intruding settlers made an agreement with him that, if the real owners, "their lordships," should require them to remove from their new settlements, they were to do so on receiving satisfaction for their improvements, or corresponding locations elsewhere. The agreement is referred to in the preamble to the Massachusetts commission to the provisional magistrates of Connecticut; but it is curious that it does not seem to be referred to in the elaborate series of instructions to Winthrop, and letters to the king and various English noblemen in regard to the charter, although it would have materially strengthened their case under the Fenwick purchase, as showing constructive permission from " their lordships " to settle, in default of notice to quit. Win-throp, to whom the instructions were addressed, was the very person who in 1685, as agent for the proprietors, had given them conditional per-

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mission to settle in the Connecticut Valley; and yet, in. 1661, they allow themselves to appear to his majesty as originally sheer interlopers. In spite of the authority of the father's journal, the statement seems to lack some particulars essential to a clear understanding of it.

The mouth of the river had already been seized by an English force, in order to keep it from the Dutch; but the works constructed must have been of the most primitive character. A party of twenty men, sent by Winthrop, arrived at the fort and. took possession November 24, 1685; and a little later came Winthrop himself and Lyon Gardiner, who soon became commander of the fort. For some years the garrison endured even more than the usual monotony of a frontier fort. Its men were ambushed and attacked during the Pe-quot struggle, but were restricted to a defensive warfare. Even settlement was really hindered by the fort. It drew danger, from Dutch or Indians, as the candle draws the moth ; and Its direct protection was only efficient enough to keep its people within the fort, and In a few scattered buildings very near it.

George Fenwick had visited the place the year of Winthrop's assumption of control. About midsummer of the year 1689 he returned with much more parade. He had two vessels, which brought also his wife, Lady Alice Boteler, and his family. The name Saybrook was given to the settlement

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in honor of the two leading proprietors, Lord Say and Lord Brooke ; but the contemporary genius for misspelling, reacted upon by the neighborhood of the river and the Sound, made it read Seabrook for many years upon the Connecticut records.

The first minister was Rev. Thomas Peters, followed In 1646 by Rev. James Fitch, who removed in 1660 to settle at Norwich with most of his church, there to become very much entangled with the affairs of the Indians and the management of their lands. Besides these, Captain John Mason, a renowned man of war and major general of the Connecticut colony's militia, and Thomas Leffingwell, were the leading men; but there were many other Saybrook names which the Norwich migration transferred to that part of the commonwealth and subsequently far beyond its borders.

The tract of land usually considered as under the jurisdiction of Saybrook was about ten miles in length, divided midway by the Connecticut River, and extending six or eight miles back from Long Island Sound, Small as this territory was, it was of great importance as controlling the only water exit from the Hartford region, and as the seat of the representative of the only paper title within the future commonwealth. The authorities of Connecticut showed their usual acuteriess by forming close relations with Fenwick. He was admitted to the first conference which formed the New England union in 1643; and, as that con-

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federation recognized only the four colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and. New Haven, Connecticut shrewdly appointed him as one of her commissioners in 1648 and 1644, with Edward Hopkins as the other. Fenwick was thus identified with Connecticut as closely as he could have been without an actual transfer of the rights which he represented. His second term of service as commissioner, in 1644, enabled him to render most important service to Connecticut in her boundary disputes with Massachusetts, which colony laid claim before the commissioners to the Pequot country. Fenwick interposed a protest against any decision which should in any way impeach his principals' title to the territory in dispute, and the commissioners decided to postpone the decision until the patentees could be heard from. The delay served to enable Connecticut to secure a firmer hold on the conquered territory before a final decision became imperative.

This diplomatic stroke had hardly been dealt when the Connecticut general court appointed a committee to treat with Fenwick for the sale of Saybrook. The logic of events had been too much for the Saybrook colony. The state of things at home was no longer what it had been in 1634, Whether Jenny Geddes ever threw her stool or not, a train of events had been started, bringing calamities to royalty and relief to the persecuted; the once supple parliament had taught

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Wentworth the real meaning of " thorough;" and, above all, Cromwell and Ills Ironsides had charged at Marston Moor, Puritan gentlemen in England had other tilings to think of than emigrating to Saybrook; and Fenwick was hopelessly isolated. Connecticut had the purpose and power of growth, but there was no longer hope for Say-brook.

The agreement of sale was made December 5, 1644. Fenwick made over the fort, Its appurtenances, and the land in the neighborhood to the colony of Connecticut. Lands not yet disposed of were to be distributed by a committee of five, of whom Fenwick was to be one. The rest of the Warwick patent, from Saybrook to Narragansett Bay, was to be brought by Fenwick " under the jurisdiction of Connecticut, if it came into his power." In return, Fenwick was to have the use of the buildings within the fort for ten years, with an impost on exports of corn, biscuit, beaver and cattle which should pass the fort during that time. As security to Fenwick, the general court ordered in the following February, in. its ratification of the agreement, that every master of a vessel should land at the fort while passing it, and deliver to the commandant of the fort a note of the dutiable part of his cargo. In 1646 the amount was limited to £180 per annum, the total duty collected during the ten years being about £I,600.

The imposition of the duty nearly disrupted

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the New England union. In 1647 Massachusetts filed a protest against it before the commissioners of the union. She claimed that Connecticut had no right to levy on the Massachusetts towns of the upper Connecticut Valley a tax which was to inure to Connecticut's sole benefit in the acquisition of Saybrook. In 1849 the commissioners of the other three colonies decided against the protest of Massachusetts, Thereupon the Massachusetts commissioners exhibited an order of their general court, levying a tax on all goods of the other colonies imported into or exported from Boston, ostensibly for the repair of the castle in the harbor. The suspiciously opportune circumstance of the castle's need of repairs just at this time excited considerable anger in the other colonies ; and this was intensified in 1658 by the refusal of Massachusetts to join the other colonies in a war against the Dutch and Indians. Perhaps the feeling in the latter case was the greater on account of the attitude assumed by Massachusetts, that of an advocate of peace and righteousness, averse to an offensive war; whereas the fact, as it seemed to contemporary observers, was that the governing desire of the Bay colony was to convince the other colonies of their impotence, and of their folly in supporting the refusal of Connecticut to yield to Massachusetts even in the petty affair of the impost. With the expiration of Fen-wick's ten years' term the retaliatory measures

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were quietly allowed to disappear: probably the castle had been put Into good repair by that time.

With the conclusion of the agreement of 1644, Say brook siibsided into the position of a Connecticut township. Fenwick continued to reside at the fort, but took no prominent part in Connecticut affairs. The Connecticut general court requested him to return to England at his earliest convenience, and act as its agent in procuring that grant of the entire jurisdiction under the patent which he had promised to get "if it ever came within his power to do so." Lady Fenwick died at Saybrook about 1648, and her husband soon after returned to England, giving up the last vestige of the commercial city which was to have graced the month of the Connecticut. He died in 1657, before the colony applied for a charter.

The Connecticut anthoriti.es were diligent in disseminating the idea, and were perhaps honest In their own belief, that Colonel Fen wick's sale had been a transfer of the patent and of the jurisdiction thereunder, for this gave the colony a quasi-legal standing which it had not before. When Massachusetts, during the impost and boundary disputes, impugned the standing of Connecticut as a colony unauthorized and unwarranted by law, the latter colony always replied that it had a charter or patent In England, but that " the confusion of the times " prevented it from show-

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ing anything more than a copy. It was when the confusion began to disappear, and the validity of the excuse with it, that the colony took steps to secure a charter from the king. In the instructions to Governor Winthrop, the colonial authorities lay great stress on the Fenwick sale as involving the equitable transfer of the patent itself, although the terms of the agreement contradict them. They go so far as to say, " Had we not been too credulous and confident of the goodness and faithfulness of that gentleman [Fenwick], we might possibly have been at a better pass ;" and they direct the governor to take steps to recover from Fenwick's heirs the amount paid to him. They even sequestered the colonial estate of Mrs. Cullick, Fenwick's sister and his New England heir, until £500 were repaid and further claims were remitted. It would be far more than even-handed justice to the fathers of the Connecticut colony to admit that they were the simple victims of the wiles of George Fenwick: if he could so easily delude them, he was more successful than their other contemporaries. They seem to have understood perfectly in 1644 the wares for which they were then bargaining, and were quite aware that this part of the consideration was purely contingent. So impossible was it in 1661 for the contingency to be fulfilled that the letter of the colony to the king takes conspicuous care not to mention the Fenwick agreement at all. Perhaps

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its attitude toward the Fenwick family may best be explained as that of men who had bought a contingency, found it less valuable than they expected, and were unwilling to confess their error even to one another.

On the other hand, the romantic life and death of Lady Fenwick ought not to give to her husband's character that generous glamour which Connecticut historians have been too prone k) allow him, It should not be forgotten that he deliberately sold and appropriated the proceeds of property of which he was not the sole owner, only the agent. The colonial authorities yielded to his demand for £1,600 for property which was not his, rather than see it sold to the Dutch; and they paid the sum agreed upon. But the substantial iniquity of the transaction undoubtedly stirred them to a greater eagerness to make use of the invalidity of one feature of the agreement in order to secure substantial justice in others. On the whole, the merits of the case seem to be with the colony.

CHAPTER IX,

CONNECTICUT UNTIL THE UNION.

IT Is much to be regretted that the fathers of the Connecticut colony seem to have been too much immersed in the struggle for existence to give us any record of the appearance of men and things in these early years. In this respect, Connecticut is unfortunate beyond any of her sister commonwealths, Hartford, the subsequent capital of the colony and state, may be taken as an example. There does not seem to be any surviving map, plan, picture, sketch or verbal description of the town, or of any public or private building, until about the time of the Revolution. Even the zeal of the antiquary finds " no thoroughfare " inscribed almost immediately on every clue which would have been a promising one in. Massachusetts, The contemporary letters, journals, etc., seem to take existing things for granted. The minds of the "writers were occupied almost exclusively with the actions of men; and the pregnant incidental hints as to social features, manners and customs, topography, etc., which are so frequently furnished in other colonies by

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writers who had no notion that they were furnishing them, are not found in Connecticut. This was due to the peculiar nature of the early struggles In the colony. Difficulties of soil, commerce and general industry were no new matters with them : their wits were working mainly to know what other men might do or could do ; how Massachusetts men would act about the boundary line ; how the Dutch would act about Long Island and the territory west of the Connecticut River; how Englishmen would settle their home government; and what would be the influence on the fortunes of the little congeries of towns which, formed without a legal title, had never acquired one except from a man who never had It and did not profess to sell It. Determined as they were to maintain the Integrity of their colonial existence, the impediments were enormous, and almost all of them lay in possible human action. It is no wonder, then, that the early official and unofficial records of Connecticut deal so largely with this one side of human history, and give us so little of any other.

Antiquarian zeal has overcome some of these difficulties. The process of tracing back land titles through the records of land transfers has given us an excellent map of Hartford in 1640, which, though partly conjectural, gives what is probably a very close representation of the town. It lies on the west bank of the Connecticut River, where

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the river runs nearly due south. Running eastward, through the southern central part of the town, is the "little river," or " riveret," a swift-flowing brook, whose depth varied with the seasons. The bulk of the town was thus to the north of the little river, and to the west of the Connecticut. Like the city of Washington, it was at first a city of magnificent distances. Its first settlers laid it out on a scale so generous that it was not necessary to enlarge the city limits until 1858, or to add more than one highway to the original roads during the century and a half between the settlement of Hartford and its Incorporation as a city in 1T84. Only one tenth of the township was included in the city limits of 1784; the city now covers the whole township, and Its streets have increased from thirty to three hundred in number within the present century.

At the mouth of the little river is the Dutch post Good Hope, still in the possession of Its original owners In 1640, as Berwick-upon-Tweed long marked the remnant of the English claims In Scotland. Alongside the main river was a strip of meadow land, and along the rising ground which bounded It on the west ran the highway from Boston, which passed through the three river towns, and afterwards became the highway to the whole territory to the south. On the north bank of the little river, fronting a road along its edge, there were placed in succession the houses of Governor

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Haynes, of Rev. Mr. Hooker, of Rev, Mr, Stone, and of Elder Goodwin, " Meeting House Alley " separating Hooker and Stone. Meeting House Alley ran from the little river to a square (now State House Square), some distance in the rear of Stone and Goodwill, and nearly in the topographical center of the town, which contained the market place, the jail, and the meeting house. The mass of the lots on this side of the town, except those fronting on the little river, lay east and west, perpendicular to the Boston highway and the parallel roads. The lots to the south of the little river lay mostly north and south, perpendicular to the highway along the little river and the parallel streets. Almost all the meadow land on this side of the little river, down to the Dutch settlement, was owned by Edward Hopkins, the colony's leading merchant; and to the southwest of his tract was the estate of the Wyllys family, on which was that which was to be the Charter Oak. Further up the little river were the tan-yard, located on an island ; and the mill, on the northern shore. Outside of the town were the cow pasture, the ox pasture, the landing, etc., and the roads were named according to the places to which they led.

Few particulars are known of the size or appearance of the meeting house, or of any other build-Ing, All the buildings were very certainly small, though the erection of a sawmill In 1667 is an in-

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, dication of an early improvement in house-building. The windows were hardly more than openings for light and air ; and their size was reduced by the scarcity of glass, and the necessity of using oiled linen or other translucent material as a substitute. The meeting house was too small to admit of galleries, or of anything more than the merest suggestion of a pulpit. There was no plaster. Instead of pews there were plain and hard benches, and artificial heat was unknown, even in the bitterest weather. Indeed, the Hartford church had no stoves until about 1815 ; and what Lodge calls " the ferocious practice " of baptizing newly born infants in church must have had an additional horror in the depth of winter. Finally an armed guard, suggestive of Indian neighbors, was an inseparable accompaniment to religious services, and was provided with seats near the door. In the other Connecticut towns, religious and other meet-Ings were called by beat of drum, one of the inhabitants making an annual contract for the service. Hartford alone had a bell, brought from Cambridge, which was probably at that time the only church or public bell on the continent, with the exception of the one at Jamestown, Va. Its contents now make part of the bell, recast in 1850, belonging to the First Congregational Church of Hartford. New Haven had no church bell until 1681.

One of the most difficult and delicate functions

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of a church committee In Connecticut and New Haven towns was the seating of the congregation. A transfer of a family from one seat to another betokened a social rise or fall. In the smaller towns, such transfers were usually made by a majority vote at a town meeting; and the town records have numberless entries of permissions granted to fortunate and rising men to sit " in the justice's pew," or "in the cross pew by the second pillar," or "in the second pew on the right," the proper places for their wives, on their side of the house, being as carefully specified.

Finally the meeting house was used for a long time for every variety of secular purposes, not only as a place for town and other meetings, but as a place of deposit for arms, military provisions, and lost or stolen property. The Hartford church building was not merely the scene of ecclesiastical councils: the meetings of the New England commissioners, of deputies from other commonwealths, and even the exciting conferences with Andros in regard to the charter, took place here. It was not until toward the middle of the next century that the towns began to see the incongruity of secular business in a dedicated house of worship, and began to erect townhouses and other distinctively public buildings.

Bad as were the roads of the United States almost everywhere until the era of turnpikes set in, and railroads in their turn forced the turnpikes up

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to a higher standard, the roads of Hartford and its neighborhood had a certain evil preeminence. The excellence of the soil was reflected in the bad. character of the roads. Its tenacious clay only needed moisture enough to become a weariness to the flesh of horses and of men. Within the last thirty years, says one authority, wagons have been seen sunk to the hub in the native clay of Pearl Street, close to the center of the city. In 1774 the town prisoners for debt represented to the general assembly that the roads were for a considerable part of the year so miry and impassable that no one came to the jail to bestow alms on the prisoners; and they petitioned that the jail limits should he enlarged. What the roads must have been in still earlier days passes speculation. It may perhaps be that the early years of John Fitch, of Windsor, spent in annual experiences of the horrors of Hartford roads, were the influence which turned his attention to improving the waterways of the country by endeavoring to perfect the steamboat.

Mr. J. C. Parsons " cannot discover that any land in the town is now in possession of the descendants of the original owners, having been continuously in the possession of the family; some, through female heirs, may possibly be so held." This state of things Is common to most Connecticut towns, but it does not imply that the original stock is dying out. It is only a symptom of the

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universal readiness to transfer property and assume new property relations. There is hardly a Connecticut town in which the names of the first settlers are not as absolutely numerous as at the settlement; if there is any relative decrease, it is due to the superimposition of a foreign population. The old names, even the Christian names, show a remarkable persistence, and an equally remarkable persistence in the characteristic of property-holding, even though their possessors have exchanged family for other property. The original fecundity is shown in the fact, that, in spite of this persistence, it is the old family names which have shown a disposition to drift out of the commonwealth by emigration. For this there have been four main channels : In early years, to Vermont, and. so over the border into New York; later, to Pennsylvania (Wyoming) and to central New York ; later still, to the Western Reserve of Ohio, and so throughout that State and the West; and of recent years, to New York city, and thence In every direction. In. addition to these main channels, isolated routes of migration have been innumerable, so that Connecticut names are now to be found In every part of the Union. Such a steady stream of migration could not but have hastened this process of alienation of family property. Those who migrated soon disposed of their share of the patrimony, and it regularly passed away from the name, though not necessarily from

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Connecticut names and stock. The absence of ancestral holdings in the State Is merely a redistribution of the original holdings.

The Massachusetts man and woman of 1887-88 are the exact social representatives of the early Connecticut settlers, except so far as the poverty and meagerness of the Massachusetts life of the time were still further Intensified by the difficul- ties of an absolutely new settlement. There are said to have been but thirty plows at the time in all Massachusetts: what estimate shall we make for the new and struggling Connecticut colony? We have, unfortunately, no such Pepys as Judge Sewall for early life in Connecticut, but Sewall's hints as to the hardships of early Massachusetts life may well be reinforced and transferred to our commonwealth. The utter lack of a multitude of things which have come to seem absolute necessaries in the eyes of their descendants; the difficulties of travel and communication; the complete isolation from the outer world through the grim months of a New England winter, during which the sacramental bread in the churches was sometimes frozen on the plates; the bitterness of the winter cold even in private houses, where the ink sometimes froze in the inkstands within a few feet of the great fire ; the utter inadequacy of medical and surgical attendance ; the ignorance of and antagonism to the art of amusement in every form ; the incongruous mixture of the civilized and the

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savage, In a society In. which a minister, trained in an English university, might be called away from writing a treatise on the dealings of the English commonwealth with its former king, or with the American churches, to drive a drunken Indian out of his kitchen, or chaffer with a hunter for food or clothing, - these were social conditions from which the early settler did not escape by removing from Massachusetts to Connecticut, and they are more fairly within the province of the Massachusetts historian.

There are, however, certain visible distinctions between the drift of public events in Connecticut and in Massachusetts which make it difficult to believe that there was not some hidden differentiation between the people of the three migrating towns and of the live which were left, which has colored their whole subsequent history.

The difficulties between king and parliament were at their height when the Connecticut colony was founded ; and for more than half a century the relations of the house of Stuart to its various opponents formed the critical public question for the New England colonies. Throughout this period there was probably no great difference between the underlying purposes of the two colonies under consideration. Both meant to preserve the public privileges which they had gained, to extend their territory and jurisdiction, and to evade or resist the interference of the home government

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with their autonomy. But the methods of Massachusetts were peculiarly her own. There were strong reasons, In the history, traditions, and consistent public teachings of the colony, why she should pose as the pronounced champion of colonial liberties. On every occasion she seems to have felt it to be incumbent upon her to assume a more or less decided public attitude, and equally incumbent upon her strongest neighbor, Connecticut, to support her by a similar course. In very many cases Connecticut did so ; in fact, the most common criticism of her policy by her own people was that she was too apt to " trot after the Bay horse." But every case in which Connecticut chose to follow a policy of her own seemed to the Bay colony only an instance of unmanly defection rather than of independent action.

The consistent policy of Connecticut, on the other hand, was to avoid notoriety and public attitudes ; to secure her privileges without attracting needless notice; to act as intensely and vigorously as possible when action seemed necessary and promising; but to say as little as possible, yield as little as possible, and evade as much as possible when open resistance was evident folly. Much of the difference must have been due to the different circumstances of the two colonies. Massachusetts, secure in the possession of a charter, must have felt always that, even if beaten down from any claim, she could fall back, in the last

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resort, upon her legal privileges. Connecticut, while without a charter, must have felt the same hesitation in following some of the leads of her neighbor which an unarmored vessel would feel in following some of the motions of an ironclad ; but the steady continuance of her policy after she had obtained a charter seems to argue some structural difference in the people. Her line of public conduct was precisely the same after as before 1662. And its success was remarkable : It is safe to say that the diplomatic skill, forethought, and self-control shown by the men who guided the course of Connecticut during this period have seldom been equaled on the larger fields of the world's history. As products of democracy, they were its best vindication.

The period closed in 1691 with the loss of the original charter of Massachusetts, the imposition of a new and restricted charter upon her, and the palpable and even conscious Inability of her public men to make good by action the positions assumed In the past. The mortification of this defeat was aggravated by the pronounced success of the Connecticut policy. The best of New England's historians has not hesitated to avow and to reiterate his conviction, not only that Connecticut left Massachusetts in the lurch, but that she allowed her application for a charter to be used by the royal agents as an essential instrument in the disintegration of the New England union and the final humiliation of Massachusetts.

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Such a conclusion assumes far too much. It would have been just, In the first place, if Connecticut had ever imitated the Massachusetts positions, and had given Massachusetts to understand that she had entered the union for the purpose of upholding the Massachusetts policy. On the contrary, the Connecticut policy was a matter of notoriety among New England public men from the beginning. The accusation of Massachusetts was wholly an afterthought to cover her own want of forethought in sacrificing democracy to class influence, and in thus drifting into a position where she was hopelessly stalemated. It must always have been baseless, except on the supposition that Connecticut was in some manner bound to follow her neighbor's lead, and to surrender her own right of judgment in every great emergency, a course which Connecticut was not bound or likely to take. In the second place, an admission of the legality, with an impeachment of the justice, of Connecticut's policy, assumes that a decided adherence by Connecticut to the Massachusetts policy would have resulted in obtaining a more complete autonomy for all the New England colonies, and would have saved the union. But this is mere conjecture, and improbable as well. It is no more probable, at least, than that Massachusetts would have scored a success equal to that of Connecticut by following a similar line of policy. It is no answer to this to say that Massachusetts

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preferred failure, after an heroic resistance, to success attained by shifty and temporizing measures : the less said about the heroism shown by the dominant class of Massachusetts, In the events which culminated in 1691, the better. Its nullification of the articles of union in 1652-54 had taken the life out of them: they never again showed any vitality, and the Connecticut charter simply gave decent burial to the corpse.

The facts are, that these commonwealths were then hardly fitted for complete autonomy; that the Connecticut policy obtained about as much as was practicable or best at the time, while the Massachusetts policy obtained considerably less. The spirit which still moves the Connecticut workman to invent anything rather than expend a footpound of energy uselessly, seems to have actuated the people from the beginning. They would, receive Andros, for example, most deferentially, make no sign of resistance until resistance could take its most vigorous and effective form : then the work was done thoroughly, and almost absolute silence followed until the next opportunity for decisive action. No one can study the history of the commonwealth without being struck with the individuality of the people, as shown In their public career ; or, without believing that that individuality was not clue simply to circumstances, to their thirty years' struggle for a charter, but that it belonged to them even in Massachusetts, perhaps even in old England.

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From their first settlement, Hartford and " ancient " Windsor seem to have gone quietly and steadily on in their natural course of development. Wethersfield had migrated without a minister, and, for this or some other reason, its course of development ran ill from the first. Within its first half dozen years of life, its neighbor towns and New Haven were compelled to offer " loving counsel " as to Wethersfield difficulties ; and Davenport, of New Haven, put his into the wise suggestion that the minority should migrate again. The minority who acted on this advice settled at Stamford and formed a New Haven town. In 1644 another portion of the Wethersfield minority, as has been said, removed to the New Haven jurisdiction and formed part of the town of Branford.

There seems to have been no defined method of turning a settlement into a political " town," beyond the mere act of the general court in receiving its deputies, until after the charter was obtained. It is difficult, therefore, to assign any exact date to the political birth of the early Connecticut towns. The growth of the family may be traced in the steady increase in the number of deputies in the general court itself. There were seventeen deputies in 1649; twenty in 1650; twenty-two in 1651; twenty-five in 1654; and twenty-six in 1656-57, this number remaining the maximum until after the union was consummated under the charter. The increase came from the

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successive recognition of the new towns of Say-brook, Stratford, Farmington, Fairfield, Norwalk, Middletown, New London, Norwich, and the Long Island towns - Huntington, Southampton and East Hampton ; but there can be no pretense at accuracy in saying when each of these towns was first represented in the general court. Town recognition seems really to have taken a somewhat different line, hinging on those ancient and important functionaries, the constables. Professor H. B. Adams has said: " We do not suppose that. this has always been a conscious standard for legislative action in the recognition of towns, or for the actual determination of town or parish units ; but we claim that without a constable, or some power representing the corporate responsibility of the community for the preservation of the local peace, a town would be an impossibility." His evident hesitation in making an assertion which would seem almost a truism to the Connecticut historian is another Illustration of the unwisdom of confining the study of the New England town system to its phases in Massachusetts, as if it had been a thing peculiar to that commonwealth. In fact, it can be studied better, for many purposes, in Connecticut than in Massachusetts; for the town in Connecticut was almost as free as independency itself until near the period of the charter, while in Massachusetts It was circumscribed from the beginning by commonwealth power. Professor

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Adams will find his supposition, doubtful as it may be under the comparatively artificial Massachusetts system, emphatically confirmed under the more natural Connecticut system. We know, for example, that the Indian purchase on which the town of Norwalk rests was made in 1840, and that settlement began about 1650 ; and we infer from various circumstances that the purchase and settlement of Middletown took place about 1646-47, But the record of their " incorporation " is no more than a vote of the general court, September 11, 1651, that " Mattabeseck [Middletown] and Norwalke " should be towns and should choose constables. As the collection of taxes and the announcement of elections were among the functions of the constable, it seems probable that the express or tacit recognition of the town's constable was in effect until the charter, a recognition of the town itself and of its right to choose deputies, The records really show no other. The difficulty of the general court in dealing with new towns was about parallel with the difficulty of the congress of the confederation in dealing with the quasi State of Vermont.

A parallel indication of the growth of the colony is to be found in the tax-lists. The first distinct increase of taxable property comes December 1, 1645, when the general court granted a " rate " of £400, "to be paid by the country." Of this amount £340 was to be paid by the three origi-

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nal towns ; £45 by Stratford and Fairfield ; £15 by Saybrook ; and £10 each by Tunixis (Farm-ington) and Southampton, L. I, In 1652 the " rates" were still confined to the towns just named, Southampton being omitted. It Is an indication of the prosperity resulting from sixteen years' work that the assessed value of the property in these seven towns was now £ 70,000, as follows: Hartford, £20,000; Windsor, £14,100; Wethersfield, £11,500 ; Farmington, £5,200 ; Say brook, £3,600; Stratford, £7,000; and Fair-field, £8,900, In the following year, three new towns, Pequot (New London), Mattabesek (Mid-dletown), and Norwalk, are recognized in a draft of men for an. armed force, as well as in the rates; and the assessed value rises to £79,700, In 1661, just before the receipt of the charter, the assessed value rises to £84,187. The usual tax assessed upon tills amount was a penny or a halfpenny, constituting a " rate " or a " half rate."

Long Island had never been more than nominally under the jurisdiction of the Dutch. They had planted a few farms at Its western end, but the rest of the island was a wilderness. Among the multitude of conflicting and unintelligible grants made by the council of Plymouth before its dissolution, was one to the Earl of Stirling, covering Long Island, The grantee seems to have claimed ownership only, not jurisdiction. In practice, therefore, when his agent sold a piece of

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territory, the new owners became an Independent political community, with some claims against them, but no direct control. The Island was thus in much the same position as the Connecticut territory before the first irruption of settlers, and offered much the same attractions as a place of refuge for persons or communities who had found the connection between church and state grievous. A company from Lynn, Mass., bought the township of Southampton from Stirling's agent, April 17, 1640. There were at first but sixteen persons in the company, Abraham Pierson being their minister. This was the church which, first removing to Branford in 1644, when Southampton became a Connecticut town, finally settled at Newark, N. J. Easthampton was settled about 1648, by another Lynn party, and was received as a Connecticut town, November 7, 1649. The town of Huntington, though part of it was bought from the Indians by Governor Eaton, of New Haven, in 1646, really dates from about 1658. May 17, 1660, it was received as a Connecticut town. There were thus three Connecticut towns on Long Island, in addition to Southold, the New Haven township. Between these and the really Dutch settlements at the western end of the island, there were English settlements in the neighborhood of Hempstead; but these acknowledged a much closer dependence on the Dutch authori-ties.

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Hardly any of the expansion of Connecticut, prior to the grant of the charter which gave a legal basis to its claims, was due to accident. In almost all of it we can see very clearly a provident determination on the part of the people to give their commonwealth respectable limits, and to turn to account every favoring circumstance in that direction. Hardly was the Pequot war under way when the general court resolved to send thirty men to occupy " the Pequoitt Countrey & River in place convenient to maynteine our right that God by Conquest hath given us." And from this moment Connecticut maintained her right by conquest to the whole of the present eastern part of the State with a vigor which was in itself strong promise of success. One secret of the commonwealth's success, in this as in the Saybrook and other cases, was the policy which it followed with adverse claimants, a policy which the politico-religious constitution of New Haven prevented It from imitating. Instead of engaging in a struggle with a rival, the Connecticut democracy always endeavored to adopt him, to make its interests his, and so to secure even a better title out of conflict. In the case of the Pequot country, it was John Winthrop, Jr., the former agent of the Saybrook proprietors, who developed an inchoate rivalry with the colony for possession of the coveted territory ; and Connecticut's policy, carefully applied, not only strengthened her title to the Pequot

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country, but gave her one of the best of her long line of excellent governors, and was in the end one of the chief means of obtaining her long desired charter. Winthrop's attention had been turned to the Pequot country. Fisher's Island, " against the mouth of the Pequot River," was granted to him by the Massachusetts general court, October T, 1640, with a reservation of the possibly superior title of Connecticut or New Haven ; and Connecticut, instead of taking any exceptions to the grant, promptly confirmed it. In 1644 Massachusetts gave Winthrop authority to " make a plantation in the Pequot country," He went to the place in the following spring, and in the autumn of 1646 had gathered a few families there, and was beginning to put up houses. ' The claims of Massachusetts were grounded on the fact that her troops had taken part in the conquest of the Pequots ; and the case was decided against her by the New England commissioners in July, 1647. Connecticut at once gave Winthrop a commission, September 9, 1647, to execute justice in his town "according to our laws and the rule of righteousness." May 17, 1649, the court established the boundaries of the new town and named its magistrates. One of these two dates, and most probably the former, is to be taken as the town's entrance to the list of Connecticut towns. On the latter date, the court suggested the name " Fair Haven," but the people preferred that of New London.

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The last of the Connecticut towns before the charter was Norwich, an offshoot of Saybrook. Its settlement was approved, tinder the name of " Mohegan," by the general court in 1659 ; and it was summoned, October 3, 1661, under the name of " Norridge," to send representatives.

The divergence between the Connecticut colony and its sister and rival of New Haven had become marked long before Monk began his march for London, The attempt has been made in this chapter to state some of the elements of strength of Connecticut, it had become a strong, well-balanced political unit, with a clear notion of a territorial goal to be striven for, and of the line of policy to be pursued in striving for it. Its democracy gave every man a personal interest In the maintenance of the colony's claims; and the results were another proof that " everybody knows more than anybody." Its towns were as free as towns could well be; the right of suffrage was as nearly as possible universal ; it can hardly be said that there were any dissatisfied elements to be placated, or else to fester In the vitals of the common.wealth; and the steady bias of the commonwealth toward civil and religious freedom had enabled it to find elements of Increased strength in what might have been elements of intestine weakness. For twenty years or more, the " loving brethren " of Connecticut and New Haven lived on in entire satisfaction with one another's corporate existence. The

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time had then come when the growing commonwealth found that the separate existence of New Haven was a complete obstacle to the natural course of development of Connecticut. The comparative weakness of New Haven will come out in the narrative of the events which led to the union ; but it is fair to say in advance that one of the most effective of these weakening elements in New Haven was the apparent agreement of a part of her people with Connecticut rather than with their own colony. Freedom was more attractive in the long run than restriction.

CHAPTER X.

THE TWO COLONIES UNTIL THE UNION.

THE organization in which the Idea of the American Union first cropped out, to exist a while and then to die away almost unnoticed, was the New England union of 1643. As Massachusetts was the most distinguished and influential member of this confederation, the full account of Its origin and history should in fairness be reserved to Massachusetts historians. It will not be improper to say here that such a union had been proposed by Connecticut in 1637, just after the settlement ; but Massachusetts received the proposal with a demand that her right to Agawam (Springfield) and to free navigation of the Connecticut should be recognized. Connecticut's answer was so " harsh " that the further consideration of the matter lapsed for some years. It soon turned out that Massachusetts had right on her side, so far, at least, as the jurisdiction over Springfield was concerned ; and the extreme confusion of English affairs, through the straggle between king and parliament, was an inducement to the New England colonies to suspend all minor differences,

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and combine for common defense against the Indians and the Dutch. In 1643 the union was formed, consisting of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, Connecticut had not yet advanced far enough on the road to a clear comprehension of her future to make any objections to New Haven's separate existence ; but New Haven's hurry to organize a systematic government and take part in the confederation seems to show at least a dawning suspicion of a possible conflict between her own interests and. those of her neighbor. There was not yet any considerable superiority of one colony over the other : their respective populations are estimated at 3,000 for Connecticut and 2,500 for New Haven.

The leading reason for the formation of the union was probably the inability of the home government, during the confusion of the civil war, to afford protection to the New-Englanders against the claims of the Dutch colony of New Nether-land. With the most amicable feelings on both sides, the Dutch colony, thrust in between English colonies to the south and to the north of it, must have been pressed more hardly as the English colonies grew, until at last the question of the annexation or independent existence of New Nether-land must have called imperatively for settlement. But the feelings on neither side were really amicable. The New England settler was an Englishman ; and the Englishman of that time had a

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chronic disposition to regard the Dutchman as a commercial rival, and an habitual intruder into places where he had no good excuse for being. As the New England Englishmen found themselves forced into nearer relations with the New Nether-land Dutch, the two parties met with many of the old animosities still unhealed. The grant to the New Netherland company by the States General of Holland, October 11, 1614, had covered all the territory "between New France and Virginia, the sea-coasts of which lie between the fortieth and forty-fifth degrees of latitude," that is, from about the present location of Philadelphia to the Bay of Funcly. This nominal jurisdiction was really confirmed by the States General to the Dutch West India Company In 1621 for twenty-four years ; but in course of time the growth of English settlement compelled the Dutch to modify this nominal claim, and to rely on the discoveries of Hudson to support their claims to the district between the thirty-eighth and forty-second degrees of latitude, or from about the mouth of the Potomac to the mouth of the Connecticut, As the greatest concession to the English, based on the English charters then in existence, they claimed the coast from Cape May to the mouth of the Connecticut, from latitude 39° to latitude 41°. In answer to all these official and unofficial claims, the English finally relied on the voyages of the Cabots as entitling them to the whole coast, Including the parts explored by Hud-

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son, which they declined to take as real discoveries, But at first, with the possible expedition of one Captain Argal, of Virginia, about 1614, who Is said to have compelled "the pretended Dutch governor " at the mouth of the Hudson to submit to the king of England and promise tribute, the English for many years quietly acquiesced in the Dutch settlement. Their objection was to the extent, not to the fact, of the Dutch colony.

The Delaware company, including nearly all the leading men of New Haven, had been formed for colonization purposes. Following the New Haven policy of purchase, the New Haven settlers had sent an agent in 1640, who bought from the natives a tract of land on both sides of the Delaware River. In the following year the New Haven civil authority asserted its jurisdiction over the purchased territory ; and a company was sent out which settled on the west shore of the Delaware, near what is now known as Salem Creek. This was under the governorship of Kieft; and William the Testy sent two ships in 1642 with a detachment of troops, who attacked the settlement, burned its houses and made the settlers prisoners. Remonstrance for this step was almost the first business of the commissioners of the New England union; but they got no satisfaction from Kieft. In 1649 Governor Eaton made another appeal to the commissioners for help ; but the commissioners were not disposed to enter upon a

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quarrel at the time. They would refuse to assist any persons from any other colony who should attempt to settle the Delaware purchase without the consent of New Haven ; but they would not maintain the claims of New Haven against the Dutch by force. The failure of the scheme was a blow from which independent New Haven never recovered. Her richest men had ventured their all and lost it, and the colony was in sore straits for some years.

The Dutch West India Company perceived clearly the growing strength of the English colonies. In reply to the appeal of the new Dutch governor, Stuyvesant, for authority to repel force by force, and for material aid, the home corporation declined to think of war, which, they said, " cannot in any event be to our advantage : the New England people are too powerful for us." Thus left in the lurch by his superiors, Stuyvesant could do no more than take the best terms obtainable ; and it is creditable to him that he kept his colony in existence more than ten years longer. His first step was to go to Hartford, to meet the New England commissioners in negotiation, arriving there September 11, 1650. He took high ground from the beginning. He insisted on having the negotiations conducted in writing; and, in his first letter, he not only protested against the presence of the English in Connecticut as an infringement on the undoubted rights of

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the. Dutch, but dated the letter at " New Nether-land," thus calmly assuming every point in dispute. The commissioners were not to be caught. They refused to receive the letter and thus acknowledge that Hartford was within the Dutch territory. He finally yielded the point, and a long correspondence resulted in an agreement to submit all the questions between Dutch and English to four arbitrators, two to be named by the governor, and two by the commissioners. Stuy-vesant named Englishmen as his agents, and the four agreed upon a settlement of the boundary matter, ignoring all other points in dispute as having occurred under the administration of Kieft. It was agreed that the Dutch were to retain their lands in Hartford; that the boundary line between the two peoples on the mainland was not to come within ten miles of the Hudson River, but was to be left undecided for the present, except the first twenty miles from the Sound, which was to begin on the west side of Greenwich Bay, between Stamford and Manhattan, running thence twenty miles north ; and that Long Island should be divided by a corresponding'line across it, "from the westernmost part of Oyster Bay " to the sea. The English thus got the greater part of Long Island, a recognition of the rightfulness of their presence in the Connecticut territory, and at least the initial twenty miles of a boundary line which must, in the nature of things, be prolonged in

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much the same direction, and which in fact has pretty closely governed subsequent boundary lines on that side of Connecticut. If these seem hard terms for the Dutch, and indicative of treachery on the part of their two English agents, it must be borne in mind that, by the terms of his instructions from his principals, Stuyvesant had to take the best terms he could get. The treaty of Hart- ford was dated September 19, 1650.

Peter Stuyvesant was probably not satisfied with the treaty, even though he was compelled to accept it. At all events, he soon furnished fresh occasion for negotiation. In the spring of 1651, the New Haven people fitted out another vessel for their Delaware Bay settlement. It touched at New Amsterdam, and its appearance put the last of the Dutch governors into a terrible rage. He arrested officers and passengers, and only released them with sounding threats of the fate of any future New Haven expedition to the Delaware, on their promise to return at once to New Haven, Again the New Haven adventurers appealed to the New England commissioners, and those officials this time espoused their cause. They wrote to Stuyvesant, charging him with a breach of the treaty, though it is not easy to see on what grounds; and a resolution was passed, promising protection to any Delaware settlement against all comers, provided it should number a hundred and fifty men. Still there was no collision.

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In the following year, vague rumors of an impending Dutch and Indian war nearly brought about the long expected struggle. As the New England colonies came nearer to the Dutch, the resulting complications with the Indians increased, The two Connecticut colonies, as has been said, had no difficulties with their own Indians after the downfall of the Pequots. Their main difficulties arose in the southwestern corner of the present State, in the district where now is the town of Greenwich. The district had been bought by its first owner, Robert Feake, as a part of the New Haven jurisdiction; but the Dutch had seduced the first inhabitants, under Captain Patrick, who had a Dutch wife, to come under their jurisdiction and accept a place as a Dutch town. It had been agreed at Hartford that Greenwich should be restored to New Haven ; but the usual vices of a border settlement seem to have prevailed here. Later, in 1656, the deputies of Stamford at New Haven complained bitterly of the conduct of the people of Greenwich, of " their disorderly walke-ing among themselues, admitting of drunkenness both amonge the English and Indians, whereby they are apt to doe mischeife both to themselues and others : they receive disorderly children or seruants who fly from their parrents or masters lawfull correction ; they marry persons in a disorderly way, beside other miscariages." It was in this Alsatia that the troubles seem to have begun

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which broke out first in the war of 1643 between the Dutch and Indians, when the Dutch called in Captain Underhill, of Stamford, as their commander-in-chief, and in the course of which Mrs. Hutchinson, who had found refuge here from her Massachusetts enemies, was done to death by the Indians. Other Indian outrages took place at intervals in the neighborhood. A. Stamford Indian, found guilty of one of the most atrocious of these, was taken to New Haven and executed by decapitation. " He sat erect and motionless," says the New Haven record, " until his head was severed from his body." There was enough trouble with the Indians in this quarter to make it a source of universal alarm when, in the spring of 1652, it was rumored that Stuyvesant had induced all the Indians to unite against the English, arid had supplied them with ammunition. The evidence of the existence of the plot was in the affidavits of a number of the Indians themselves, a class of evidence which ought of itself to have been Stuyve-sant's complete vindication. A majority of the commissioners, however, believed it, and based upon it an ultimatum to Stuyvesant. The accusation naturally made Stuyvesant very indignant, and he demanded a committee of investigation. The commissioners sent three distinguished New-Englanders to New Amsterdam to act as such committee. The tone of their letters was not conciliatory, or calculated to inspire the governor with

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confidence in his judges ; and he refused to answer any questions except such as should be approTed by persons whom he should select. His reason doubtless was his diffidence of his familiarity with the language in which the examination was to be conducted. But, as the persons whom he selected had " been complained of for misdemeanors at Hartford, and one of them had been laid under bonds for his crimes," the committee took the whole proceeding as a fresh affront, and judges and accused parted in still higher exasperation with one another. On the report of the committee, whose members had obtained new evidence of Stuyvesant's duplicity and treachery on their way home, all the commissioners except those of Massachusetts declared for war. Massachusetts referred the question to her ministers, who declared that, while they believed the evidence against the Dutch governor, it was not sufficient to justify a war before the judgment of the rest of the world; and that the colonies should stand on the defensive, without declaring war. One of their number, who claimed to write on behalf of " many pensive hearts," took more warlike ground, and threatened the commissioners with the curse of the angel of the Lord against Meroz unless they declared war upon Stuyvesant. But the resolution of the majority was more satisfactory to the Massachusetts general court, and it steadfastly refused to take part in an offensive war. The whole controversy

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is particularly interesting for the reason that It was the first in our history which shows the tendency which has finally controlled American constitutional law. All the parties acknowledged the binding character of the articles of union ; and the controversy went mainly to the construction of them, to the interpretation of the powers of the commissioners under them. The occasion was not, as it would have been in England, a dispute as to what the governing body had better do, but a dispute as to what the governing body had a right to do, thus showing that in the latter case there was behind the nominally governing body a recognized popular sovereignty superior to It. This debate of 1652 might very well be taken as the beginning of constitutional law, in the peculiar phase of the term which obtains in the United States and other countries having a written constitution.

The unusual bitterness of the controversy had. come largely, not from academic differences as to the construction of the articles, but from the general suspicion that the Bay colony was moved by the question of the tolls at the month of the Connecticut liiver, already referred to, and by a desire to convince the associate colonies that Massachusetts was their real head. Some of the western towns of Connecticut even made ready for war on. their own account; and It was when all prospect of war, either by colonial or home power, had van-

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ished, that Ludlow in disgust left the colony which lie had helped to plant, and went to Virginia, Indeed, the New England confederation was in a state of extreme confusion, and almost in articulo mortis. The commissioners had declared war; Massachusetts had really introduced the first instance of nullification; and the other colonies found it equally difficult to make war, in obedience to the commissioners, without Massachusetts, or to keep the peace and satisfy their own people, Connecticut and New Haven kept a small cruiser in commission. New Haven decided guardedly that it would not do to begin war under present circumstances ; and it was not until April, 1654, that the Hartford general court formally " sequestered " the Dutch fort of Good Hope, and banished the Dutch ensign from Connecticut soil. But both had great difficulty in restraining their people, and a small insurrection had to be quelled in Stamford.

The relations between England and Holland had not been improved by the establishment of the English commonwealth. At the execution of Charles I., the Dutch States General had waited in a body on his son, recognized him as Charles II., and refused even a reception to the English envoys. Cromwell's successful battle of Dunbar, in September, 1650, and his still more successful battle of Worcester just a year later, brought the Dutch to their senses, and they asked an alliance

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with the Commonwealth, The English parliamentary leaders, however, wished to make a successful navy the counterbalance to their too successful army. They passed the Navigation Act of 1651, which cut their rivals out of the carrying trade. There was an " accidental" collision between the two fleets in May, 1652, when Blake called upon Van Tromp to lower his flag, and Van Tromp answered with a broadside. Again, in the autumn, Blake and De Ruyter met in the Channel in an indecisive conflict: and in November Van Trornp drove Blake into the Thames, and sailed the Channel with a broom at his masthead, A few months later, Blake, issuing forth again into the Channel with a horsewhip at his masthead, drove Van Trornp in his turn into harbor.

While the two great marine monsters were thus rolling heavily into collision, it was but natural that the little fish across the Atlantic should take a keen, personal interest in the matter. Every accidental victory of Blake was to them an additional hope of a parliamentary fleet, which should deal out justice to the wicked Dutch governor and his Manhattan associates, New Haven was especially elate, for the relations of her leading men with Cromwell had always been particularly close. It was the battle of Naseby which had brought about that almost solitary touch of romance in Connecticut history, the " phantom ship " of New Haven. The New Haven people, feeling more

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reason for relying on the rising fortunes of the Cromwell interest, equipped a ship of one hundred and fifty tons, freighted her, and sent her to England with an agent to endeavor to procure a charter from the new power there. It was in January, 1647, that she sailed, and the ice in the harbor had to be cut in order to open the way for her. Nothing more was ever known of her : the seventy souls on board had gone to their account, and the material loss was so severe a strain on the colony that its leaders began to cast about for a new location, in Ireland, Jamaica, or elsewhere,-the Jamaica proposition being Cromwell's own. In June, 1649, so the story goes, the long-lost ship was seen beating up the harbor towards New Haven, As the townspeople gathered to watch her, at first incredulous, then joyful, then hesitating and awe-stricken, it was seen that there was but one man on her deck; that he was leaning on his sword, and looked sadly on the gathered multitude. As she drew nearer, he pointed once to the sea, and then New Haven's phantom ship vanished from sight.

In June, 1653, the joyful news was received that Cromwell had taken sides with the majority of the commissioners, and had enjoined Massachusetts to desist from her opposition ; and that a fleet of commonwealth ships was at Boston, ready to help the New England union to remove the Dutch flag from Manhattan. The Massachusetts

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general court was angry, but not angry enough to resist openly. It still refused to raise troops for the war, but consented to allow the parliamentary commissioners to raise men in Massachusetts, If they could. Arrangements for an expedition of eight hundred men, to attack New Netherland, were in progress, when they were stopped by the news of peace between England and Holland, which had been concluded April 5, 1654. Stuyve-sant thus obtained another lease of life.

There was at first a strong disposition in Connecticut and New Haven to allow the union to lapse because of what they regarded as the perfidious conduct of Massachusetts. New Haven had even formally voted not to choose commissioners. But Massachusetts urged a continuance of the union so feelingly that commissioners were chosen as usual, and their meeting proved to be an exceedingly amicable one. From that time the union went on through the rest of its brief exist- ence with* little apparent friction. But it is as evident as anything can be that the heart had been taken out of it by the course of Massachusetts in 1652. Nullification is nullification, whether the moving cause be worthy or unworthy ; and after Massachusetts had once successfully nullified the plain provisions of the articles, her confederates could never again feel that perfect confidence in her future action which is essential to the usefulness and even the existence of a league govern-

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ment. A stronger tendency Is evident every year to reduce the functions of the commissioners to matters of administrative routine, while the several colonies diverge more and more strongly in the protection of their own interests and in their peculiar development.

For six years after the peace between England and Holland, the two Connecticut colonies went on in their course of development with few events of exceptional interest. Successive deaths were thinning out the ranks of the original settlers. Hooker died in 1647. John Haynes, the first governor of Connecticut, died in 1654, and his family seems to have become extinct soon after. Henry Wolcott, one of the most influential leaders of the same colony, died in 1655. He was more fortunate in his descendants : there was hardly a time for the next two centuries when a Wolcott was not in some post of trust and honor in the service of the Commonwealth. In 1657 and 1658 died Edward Hopkins of Connecticut, and Theophilus Eaton of New Haven. Hopkins had heen governor of his colony in alternate years from 1640 until 1654, Haynes being chosen in the other years. He had married the sister of David Yale, a Boston merchant ; and his bequest to the towns of Hartford and New Haven founded the Hopkins grammar schools in those cities, as Elihu Yale's beneficence, long afterward gave the impetus to the college which bears his name. Eaton had been chosen

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governor of New Haven every year from the settlement in 1638 until his death. His loss was almost irreparable to his colony, coming as it did just before the crisis in her history. It is impossible here to do justice to his public services and his private worth. But there are some indications that in these respects he had surmounted obstacles which the official records have not fully detailed. His biographers claim that his numerous family " was under the most perfect government." If the facts found by the church trial of 1644, in which Mrs, Eaton (the governor's second wife) was censured, are to be taken as proved, Eaton's home life must have been a constant thorn in the flesh. Mrs. Eaton seems to have been in the habit of venting a very ugly temper in the most outrageous language to the whole family, from her husband down to u Anthony the neager." She slapped the face of " old Mrs. Eaton," while the family were at dinner, until the governor was compelled to hold her hands; she pinched Mary, the governor's daughter by his first marriage, until she was black and blue, and " knocked her head against the dresser, which made her nose bleed much ;" she slandered Mary, falsely impeaching her character ; and in all points she seems to have been the type of the vulgar notion of a stepmother. She, the wife of one of the " seven pillars," put the church to shame by becoming a pronounced Anabaptist, walking out from the com-

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munion service, arguing with Mr. Davenport from her seat in the audience, and expressing loud and exasperating approbation when he used the familiar formula, " On this point I will be brief." There seems to have been a good deal "of human nature under the surface, even in New Haven.

Davenport was still in New Haven: it was not until 1668, after the union of the two colonies had been accomplished, that he removed to Boston. In both Connecticut and New Haven, the healthy condition of the body politic was shown by the fact that new men were coming up. prepared to •take the places of those whom death was so rapidly removing. First among these was John Winthrop. Chosen governor in 1657, deputy governor in 1658, and governor again in 1659, he became at once so necessary to the people of Connecticut that they changed the provision In their constitution forbidding the Immediate reelection of a governor, and he was reflected annually until his death in 1676. His son, Fitz John, following in his father's course, was governor from 1698 until his death in 1707, The Wyllyses, Talcotts, Wol-cotts, Treats, Shermans, and other families were sending a stream of young men Into public life, and all of them were well fitted for it. One of the ablest of the new men was John Allyn of Hartford. Nominated to the board of assistants in 1661, he was chosen secretary of state in 1664, and held that office for twenty-eight years between

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that date and his death in 1696. The personalities of the men of the time get little attention, unless tlieir work is theological, as in the case of Hooker or Davenport, or their non-essential characteristics are such as to strike the public attention and so win some advantage for the colony, as in the case of Winthrop. The mass of the leaders pass slowly across the stage, doing their work like men, but leaving us hardly any notion of tlieir personal appearance or traits. The influence of the feeling is shown in the refusal of the Wyllys family to erect any monuments in their family burying ground. Said one of them: " If Connecticut cannot remember the Wyllyses without a monument, let tlieir memory rot." In few cases is this general tendency more disappointing than in that of John Allyn, Hardly any trace of him is left beyond the cramped but legible writing in which he kept the records, and the work which those records detail. And yet it is quite evident that, whenever work was to be done requiring stubborn tenacity of purpose and cautious shrewdness of method, John Allyn's name always appears in the center of it. Like so many of his contemporaries, he seems to have been entirely satisfied with the reward offered by the consciousness of effective work; and we can only wonder now how much the commonwealth of Connecticut owes to John Allyn.

Eaton's place at New Haven had been taken by

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William Leete, who served as governor of that colony from 1661 until the union of the colonies. He was one of the original settlers, and one of the seven pillars of the church at Guilford. After the union, he became deputy governor, 1669-75, and then served as governor from Winthrop's death until 1680, dying in 1683.

CHAPTER XI.

THE CHARTER AND UNION

MONK'S march to London came in the opening days of the year 1660. On the 25th of April, Charles landed at Dover ; and in July the momentous tidings readied Boston. On the vessel which brought them came Whalley and GofEe, two of the regicides: England was no longer a place for them. They stayed in Boston and Cambridge until the following February, treated at first with distinguished consideration by the authorities as well as by private persons. The first intelligence that they were under the ban of the new government made such a change in their treatment that they fled to New Haven, arriving there March 27. A royal warrant for their arrest followed them from Massachusetts through Hartford, but the messengers found their errand blocked at New Haven by the most exasperating obstacles. They had to yield to the magistrates' cautious regard for the Sabbath ; their documents were read aloud in public meeting, instead of being treated as secret-service business ; and, when the Sabbath came, they were regaled with a sermon from the

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significant text: " Hide the outcasts ; bewray not him that wandereth ; let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab ; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler." Davenport and his people were evidently in full accord with the regicides. Leete and the magistrates seem to have seen the consequences of their action ; but they continued to make use of every legal obstacle to thwart the arrest, and the messengers finally returned to Boston empty-handed, though the two judges had been concealed at New Haven, or within three miles of it, throughout their visit. The " Judges' Cave," on the summit of West Rock, sheltered them for a month, and then they set out on their wanderings. Sometimes in New Haven, Guilford, or Milford, sometimes in their old refuge or like spots, they continued to escape their pursuers for some three years. In 1664, finding that special royal commissioners had arrived, charged with their arrest, they went to Hadley, in western Massachusetts. Their choice of a final refuge shows again the secret tie which seems to have bound together the New Haven people, the minority of the dissatisfied Connecticut churches, and the Cromwellian element in England; for Had-ley's settlement had been due to the secession of a minority of the Hartford and Wethersfield churches. This was the scene of their asserted appearance to head the settlers in repelling an Indian attack; and here Whalley died about 1674,

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and Goffe probably five years later. Their burial-place Is really uncertain, though some have believed It to be in New Haven.

The authorities of Connecticut were as anxious as those of Now Haven that no harm should come to the regicides, and the fugitives found as frequent and as secure refuge in Hartford as anywhere else. But the difference of method showed itself in this as in other cases. When the regicides were really not within their jurisdiction, the Connecticut authorities always seized the opportunity to make their zeal In the king's service evident. They overwhelmed the royal commissioners with warrants, letters of authority, and proclamations ; the colony was in a ferment because of their haste to lay hands on the criminals; they were his majesty's most faithful servants. Under the like circumstances, the New Haven authorities always showed a decorous satisfaction in saying No to the commissioners, which went far to discount the sincerity of their denials when the fugitives were suspected to be concealed within their jurisdiction with their privity. They could not but have been reported to the home authorities as a dangerous colony, the remaining quintessence of Cromwellianism ; and such reports could not but have had a strong influence on the fortunes of the two colonies in the charter struggle which followed immediately.

The records of Connecticut show nothing done

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in regard to the Restoration until March 14, 1660 (61), though the vote then passed refers to a previous decision at an Informal meeting of the magistrates and deputies. On the date just given, the general court voted that Charles II. should be proclaimed king ; that an address should be prepared and sent to him, asking for " the continuance and confirmation of such privilidges and lib-erties as are necessary for the comfortable and peaceable settlement of this colony ;" and that the £500 which the Cullick estate was to pay the colony should be reserved to pay the expense of the application. The court of election, May 16, approved a draft of an address offered by Governor Winthrop, appointed a committee to revise and complete it, and named the governor as the colony's agent in England in regard to the patent. This last is the first open mention of what must have been the burning desire of every Connecticut leader, - the obtaining of a charter to give legal title to what had been done by popular authority. At the session of June 7, the court finally approved the address which • had been completed, renewed the governor's appointment as agent " to procure us a patent," and authorized him to draw on the treasurer for £500. From that time there is not a word about the charter in the records until they are blazoned with the triumphant entry of its reception in October, 1662, more than a year afterward. In the interim, the colony, hav-

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ing done all that it could do, waited in sober patience. Just as Winthrop was embarking for England, New Haven at last proclaimed Charles II, king, more than a year after the news of his accession had been received ; and the step was not taken until remonstrances had been received from friends at home, warning the colony of the evil impression which its continued silence was making there. The form has been called grudging and half-hearted. In reality, it almost demands the space for insertion in full, for the sake of the refreshing contrast which its simple and. manly terms offer to the servility of the style which the habit of the times at court seems to have extorted from Connecticut, It is as follows :

" Although we have not received any form of proclamation, by order from His Majesty or Council of State, for proclaiming His Majesty in this Colony; yet the Court, taking encouragement from what has been done in the rest of the United Colonies, hath thought fit to declare publicly and proclaim that we do acknowledge His Royal Highness, Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, to be our sovereign lord and king ; and that we do acknowledge ourselves, the inhabitants of this colony, to be his Majesty's loyal and faithful subjects."

Winthrop set sail for England in August, 1661.

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He took with him the address and petition to his majesty, which had cost the whole Intellect of the colony such prolonged labor; a letter of instructions from his principals; and letters to Lord Say and Sele, and the Earl of Manchester, two old Puritans, now of the king's privy council. The instructions directed him to consult with Say and Sele, Brooke, and such of the original patentees as he could find ; to endeavor to obtain a copy of the Say and Sele patent, and have it confirmed to the colony, with such amendments as could be obtained ; and, in case the Say and Sele patent could not be come at, to apply for a new patent for the colony, with bounds extending " eastward to the Plymouth line, northward to the limits of the Massachusetts colony, and westward to the Bay of Delaware, If It may be," The southern limit is not mentioned, unless a recommendation to include the adjacent islands be considered as carrying the limits beyond New Haven and over Long Island, A contemporary protest from Connecticut against the appointment of a boundary committee, cited by Atwater, would go to show that such was the case. " We conceive you cannot be ignorant of our real and true light to those parts of the country where you are seated, both by conquest, purchase, and possession, though hitherto we have been silent, and altogether forborne to make any absolute challenge to our own," The address to the king is of the most inflated style of

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the Stuart period of English. It begins with a regret that its authors are separated by so vast an ocean from those who are under the immediate influence and splendor of so great a monarch, in the princely palace of his renowned imperial city, the glory of the whole earth ; and that a too early winter had hindered them from long since prostrating themselves by an humble address at their sovereign prince's feet. It described the settlement of the colony just at the beginning of the sad and unhappy times of the wars in England, which its people had since been bewailing with sighs and mournful tears. It told how the people of Connecticut, all through the civil war, had been hiding themselves behind the mountains in that desolate desert, as a people forsaken, choosing rather to sit solitary, and wait upon the Divine Providence for protection, than to apply to any of the illegitimate governments which had arisen in England, their hearts still remaining entire to his majesty's interests. It implored his majesty, now that the beams of his sovereignty had not only filled the world's hemisphere, but had appeared over the great deeps in the New England horizon, to accept " this colony, your own colony, a little branch of your mighty empire." And it pleaded their poverty as an excuse for their presentation of nothing more than their hearts and loyal affections to his majesty. It is hard to see how Winthrop could have read the document with a straight face.