utmost and speediest endeavours to break and hinder the league laboured for by the Pequots against Mohegan, and Pequots against the English (excusing the not sending of company, and supply by the haste of business); the Lord helped me imme diately to put my life into my hand, and, scarcely acquainting my wife, to ship myself all alone in a FOOR CANOE, and to cut through a stormy wind with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the Sachem's house*! 2. Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot ambassadors, whose hands and arms, with out, reaked with the blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on Connecticut river, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also! 3. When GOD wonderfully preserved me and helped me to break to pieces the Pequot's negociation and design, and to make, and promote, and finish, by many travels and charges, the English league with the Narragansetts and Mohegins against the Pequots, and that the English forces marched up to the Narragansett country against the Pequots. I gladly entertained at my house, in PROVIDENCE, the General Stoughton and his officers, and used my utmost care that all his officers and soldiers should be well accommodated with us. 4. I marched up with them to the Narragansett Sachems, and brought my countrymen and the barbarians, Sachems

* About twenty-five miles by water.

and captains, to a mutual confidence and complacence each in other, 5. Though I was ready to have marched further, yet upon agreement that I should keep at PROVIDENCE as an agent between the Bay and the army, I returned, and was interpreter and intelligencer, constantly receiving and sending letters to the Governor and Council at Boston, &c. in which work I judge it no impertinent digression, to recite (out of the many scores of letters at times from Mr. Winthrop) this one pious and heavenly prophecy, touching all New England, of that gallant man, viz. "If the Lord turn away his face from our sins, and bless our endeavours and yours, at this turn against our bloody enemy, we and our children shall long enjoy peace in this our wilderness condition." And himself, and some other of the Council, motioned, and it was debated, whether or not, I had not merited, not only to be recalled from banishment, but also to be honoured with some mark of favour. It is known who hindered, who never promoted the liberty of OTHER MEN'S CONSCIENCES! These things, and ten times more, I could relate, to show that I am no stranger to the Pequot wars and lands, and possibly not far from the merit of a foot of land in either country, which I have not.

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5. Upon frequent exceptions against Providence men, that we had no authority for civil government, I went purposely to ENGLAND*, and upon

* He went over in the spring of 1643, but was forced to go to the Dutch at New York for a passage to England.

my report and petition, THE PARLIAMENT granted us a Charter of Government for those parts, so judged vacant on all hands. And upon this the Country about us was more friendly, and wrote to us, and treated us as an authorized colony; only the differences of OUR CONSCIENCES much obstructed. The bounds of this our Charter, I (having ocular knowledge of persons, places, and transactions,) did honestly and conscientiously, as in the holy presence of God, draw up from Pawcatuck river, which I then believed, and still do, is free from all English claims and conquests. For although there were some Pequots on this side of the river, who, by reason of some Sachems' marriages with some on this side, lived in a kind of neutrality with both sides; yet, upon breaking out of the war, they relinquished their land to the possession of their enemies, the Narragansetts, and their land never came into the condition of the land on the other side, which the English by conquest challenged: so that I must still affirm, as in God's holy presence, I tenderly waved to touch a foot of land in which I knew the Pequot wars were maintained, and were properly Pequot, being a gallant country. And from Pawcatuck river hitherward, being but a patch of ground full of troublesome inhabitants, I did, as I judged, inoffensively, draw our poor and inconsiderable line.

"6. Upon our humble address, by our agent Mr. Clarke to HIS MAJESTY, and his gracious promise of renewing our charter, Mr. Winthrop, son to the

governor at Boston, upon some mistake, had entrenched upon our line, and not only so, but is said, upon the lines of other Charters also; upon Mr. Clarke's complaint, your grant was called in again, and it had never been returned, but upon the report that the agents, Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Clarke, were agreed by the mediation of friends, and it is true they came to a solemn agreement, under hands and seals, which agreement was never violated on our part.

"7. But the King's majesty sending his commissioners, among other his royal purposes, to reconcile differences, and to settle the bounds between the colonies, yourselves know how the King himself therefore, hath given a decision of this controversy. Accordingly, the King's commissioners aforesaid at Rhode Island (where as a commissioner for this colony, I transacted with them, as did also commissioners from Plymouth), they composed a controversy between Plymouth and us, and settled the bounds between us, in which we rest*.

"8. However you satisfy yourselves with the Pequot conquest; with the sealing of your charter a few weeks before ours; with the complaints of particular men in your colony, yet upon due and serious examination of matters, in the sight of God, you will find the business at bottom to be,

"(1.) A depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams, and shadows of this vanishing life, great portions of land, land in this wilderness, as if men

*This was in 1665.

were in as great necessity and danger for want of great portions of land, as poor, hungry, thirsty seamen have after a sick and stormy, a long and starving passage! This is one of the gods of New England, which THE LIVING and MOST HIGH ETErnal will destroy and famish.

"(2) An unneighbourly and unchristian intrusion upon us, as being the weaker, contrary to your laws as well as ours, concerning purchasing of lands without the consent of the General court. This I told Major Atherton at his first going up to the Narragansett about this business: 1 refused all their proffers of land, and refused to interpret for them to the Sachems.

"(3.) From these violations and intrusions, arise the complaints of many Privateers, not dealing as they would be dealt with, according to the law of Nature, the law of the Prophets and Christ Jesus, complaining against others in a design, when they themselves are delinquents and wrong doers.

"I could aggravate this many ways with Scripture, rhetoric, and similitudes, but I see need of anodynes (as physicians speak), and not irritations. Only this I must crave leave to say, that it looks like a prodigy or monster, that countrymen among savages in a wilderness, that professors of GOD and one Mediator, of an Eternal life, and this is like a dream, should not be content with those vast and large tracts which all the other colonies have, (like platters and tables full of dainties) but pull and snatch away their poor neighbours' bit or crust: and a crust