CHAPTER II.

SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND.

THE TOWNS ON THE CONNECTICUT RIVER.

- THE

NEW HAVEN

OTHER TOWNS AND

- PREPARATORY GOVERNMENT. FIRST CONSTITUTION AND THE EARLIEST GOVERNORS. - CIVIL AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE FIRST SETTLERS. NECESSITY OF STRINGENT RULE. - CHARACTER OF EARLY LEGISLATION. ANOTHER EMIGRATION FROM BOSTON.· AND ITS CHURCH OF SEVEN PILLARS. - ESTABLISHMENT OF CHURCHES. DUTCH AND ENGLISH BOUNDARIES. DIFFERENCE OF PURPOSE IN THE TWO CLASSES OF SETTLERS. ENGLISH DIPLOMACY AT HOME. ENGLISH INTRUSIONS UPON LONG ISLAND. — CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE OF CONNECTICUT. SETTLEMENT OF RHODE ISLAND. ROGER WILLIAMS'S COLONY AND ITS GOVERNMENT. - HEATED CONTROVERSY IN MASSACHUSETTS. SEVERITY OF THE RULING PARTY. TREATMENT OF THE ANTINOMIANS. — SETTLEMENT OF RHODE ISLAND AT ACQUIDNECK (PORTSMOUTH). — CODDINGTON CHOSEN CHief Judge. — DISCORDS IN THE NEW COLONY. THE HUTCHINSONS AT ACQUIDNECK. - HOSTILITY OF MASSACHUSETTS TO ACQUIDNECK. CODDINGTON'S PROPOSED ALLIANCE OF THE COLONIES. THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY.-AGAMENTICUS AND ACQUIDNECK

EXCLUDED.

Connecticut

dependent

THE colonies on the Connecticut River, though that region was not within the bounds of the Massachusetts charter, were made an in- for the first year under the government of commissioners Colony. selected from among their own people, but appointed by the Massachusetts General Court.1 The burden of the war had fallen upon them, and with the necessity of self-reliance came also, no doubt, the sense of independence. When on the first day of May, 1637, it "was ordered that there shall be an offensive war against the Pequot," it was done by a General Court, convened at Hartford, containing not only the commissioners appointed by Massachusetts, whose term of office had just expired, but nine delegates - committees they were called from the three towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield. The war brought its responsibilities as well as its advantages. The colony was oppressed with debt; so many of its effective men had been called to military service that agriculture had been neglected; there was want of food and want of sufficient shelter for many families. It would be easy to go to ruin if there were any lack of vigorous measures.

--

1 These were Roger Ludlow, William Pincheon, John Steele, William Swaine, Henry Smith, William Phelps, William Westwood, and Andrew Ward.

2 The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, etc., etc., edited by J. Hammond Trumbull.

1639.]

THE FIRST CONNECTICUT CONSTITUTION.

23

The General Court was equal to the occasion. The debt was provided for by a special tax of six hundred and twenty pounds; though corn and cattle had risen largely in price, they were gathered from wherever they could be found, and the people were fed without any serious distress till the season of another harvest. To guard against further trouble from the Indians a thorough military organization of all the towns was established, at the head of which Captain Mason was placed as commander-in-chief. The young colony had already grown too large to depend longer upon its older sister of the Bay; the war had thrown it upon its own resources; within eighteen months from the end of it the new government took a more positive form and adopted a constitution.

tion adopted.

"Well knowing," its preamble recited," where a people are gathered togather the word of God requires that to mayntayne the A Constitupeace and union of such a people there should be an orderly 169. and decent Gouerment established according to God, to order and dispose of the affayres of the people at all seasons as occation shall require; doe therefore assotiate and conioyne our selues to be as one Publike State or Commonwelth." It recognized no allegiance to any other power, not even that of England; it instituted a popular government in which all the freemen of the three towns were equal before the law, entering "into Combination & Confederation togather to mayntayne & presearue the liberty & purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus which we now professe, as also the disciplyne of the Churches, which according to the truth of the said gospell is now practised among us; As also in our Ciuell Affaires to be guided & gouerned according to such Lawes, Rules, Orders & decrees as shall be made, ordered, & decreed."

The colony thus founded a Christian Commonwealth and a purely democratic republic upon the first written constitution of any State in America, if not indeed, in the world. And this, with such slight changes in its practical provisions as the increase of population demanded, was the fundamental law of Connecticut for nearly two centuries. Its first governor, chosen in April, 1639, was John Haynes, who had already been a governor of Mas

-Jo: Haynrs:

Signature of John Haynes.

sachusetts Bay; its second, elected the next year, was Edward Hopkins. The constitution provided that the chief magistrate should

1 Edward Hopkins came to Boston with the New Haven company, in the spring of 1637, and was the son-in-law of Governor Eaton, of that colony. He returned to England after

Edua: Hopkin's

be chosen for a single year only, and was ineligible for the year next ensuing. The letter of the law was observed while its spirit was not lost. The people of Connecticut knew when they had a good governor, and for many years, with two or three exceptions at the outset, Haynes and Hopkins were

Signature of Edward Hopkins.

alternately elected to that office.

The rule of the magistrate in the young Commonwealth was rigid. The common welfare demanded implicit submission to a compact for mutual protection. The virtuous and the orderly might be, as they usually are, a law unto themselves; but there was special need of watchfulness and restraint of the idle, the vicious, and the violent, who, relieved from the accustomed rule of a long organized society, would riot in the license of relaxed law. All the old bonds that hold society together, and kept anarchy at arms-length, were loosened. The habit of obedience to constituted authority needed to be reëstablished by fresh subjection and enforced discipline. In this respect the colonies were all alike. Each had to work out for itself with such wisdom and such vigor as it could command, the problem of self-government; and each addressed itself, first of all, to the question of self-preservation. Large considerations of the science of government concerned them less at this early stage of their existence than the daily conduct of each individual citizen. There was nothing in morals or in manners, as to what men should eat and drink, and wherewithal they should be clothed; how they should dispose of their time and their industry; what their relations should be to each other, to the state, to their wives, to their children; in all the affairs of life, whether small or great, there was nothing of which the law did not take cognizance. It was needful to the preservation and good order of society so newly organized that it should do so; and if sometimes indeed very often the true and sole function of perfected government, protection of person and property, was overstepped, and intellectual freedom encroached upon in the attempt to regulate religious belief and coerce the conscience, such exercise of power is to be pardoned to the exigencies of the times.

Character of the government.

There were not probably more than a thousand people in the three Connecticut towns when the Pequot war was finished; the first English child born on the banks of that river was at that time only eighteen

a residence of about fourteen years in Connecticut, and became a member of Cromwell's Parliament of 1657, and a commissioner of the army and navy. (See note in Savage s Winthrop, vol. i., p. 273.)

1 David, son of Captain Lion Gardiner, born at Saybrook Fort, April, 1636. Life of Gardiner, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Third Series, vol. x, p. 177.

1639.]

CHARACTER OF THE GOVERNMENT.

25

months old. It was not difficult for the watchful eyes of the magistrates to scan carefully the life and conversation of each man and woman. Nor could it be doubted that a community made up, in some degree, of mere adventurers,

ford said, by a "hankering mind" to the pleasant Connecticut meadows on which Holmes's colony from Plymouth had already settled; and by sheer weight of numbers and the influence of the stronger government behind them, they dispossessed the first comers. When such were the saints what might not be looked for from the sinners? The devil lurked even among the churches of the Puritans. and if he could not be got rid of altogether at least he could be watched with unceasing vigilance.

And the vigilance was unceasing. The records of the proceedings of the General Court that chose the first chief magistrate of the new Commonwealth, also show that by the decree of that fountain of law one Edmunds was to be whip

ped at a cart's tail on a lecture day at Hartford; that one Williams was to stand upon the pillory from the ringing of the first bell to the end of the lecture, and to be whipped at the cart's tail, both severity of in Hartford and Windsor; and that one Starke was to be the laws. punished in the same way, to pay a heavy fine, and to have besides the letter R branded upon his cheek. The crime of each and all was wrong done one Mary Holt, - such wrong that Starke was also

condemned to marry her; which, however, he probably never did. At the next General Court, four months afterwards, it was ordered that Mary Holt herself be whipped for misconduct with a fourth paramour, and be banished from the jurisdiction; not that she was good enough for Boston, but that Boston, perhaps, could better manage her.

But offences of this kind-of the frequency and often most revolting character of which, notwithstanding the severity of the laws of the Puritans, there is abundant evidence in the early records of all the colonies were by no means the only ones which the magistrates undertook at once to expose and to punish. Unseasonable and immoderate drinking, or even the suspicion of it; any violence of language or of conduct; reflections upon the actions of the General Court; "the sin of lying which," says the record (1640), "begins to be practised by many persons in this Commonwealth;" extravagance in the fashion of apparel, "that divers persons of several ranks are observed to exceed in ;" the selling of goods beyond reasonable prices; "a stubborn or rebellious carriage against parents or governors; these and other offences of a like character, which in older societies are usually left to the control of private conscience, or judgment, or influence, were subjects of legislation, and brought upon the perpetrators prompt and severe penalties.1

Beneficent

In other respects, however, the welfare of the community was as carefully looked after as it was in these guarded against real or fancied injuries. The rate of wages and the length of a working-day eleven hours in summer-time and nine in winter of actual legislation. labor were soon regulated by law, that no advantage should be taken of the necessities of new settlers or of the scarcity of laborers. Any possible want of food was provided for by making it the duty of magistrates to ascertain the probable demand and to meet it with a sufficient supply. Idleness was made inexcusable, and agriculture encouraged by allotments of lands and their compulsory cultivation; and titles were made unquestionable by a register which the law required should be kept in every town. That timber should not be wasted, none could be cut or exported except by special license from the Court, and no trees were permitted to be felled except after the fall of the leaf. In 1640 it was enacted that each family should sow at least one spoonful of English hempseed and cultivate it "in husbanly manner" for a supply of seed the next year. The importation of cotton, which they could not raise, was provided for at the public expense to find its way to the domestic spinning-wheels; but the cultivation of tobacco, which it was soon found would grow so well in the rich bottom-lands of the Connecticut, was encouraged by a decree

1 Colonial Records of Connecticut.