from the British government came in hot pursuit with orders to arrest them. For a while the fugitives, aided by the people of Boston, baffled the officers, and then escaped to New Haven. Here for many weeks they lay in concealment; not even the Indians would accept the reward which was offered for their apprehension. At last the exiles reached the valley of the Connecticut and found refuge at the village of Hadley, where they passed the remainder of their lives. It was in October of this same fatal year that Hugh Peters, the old friend of the colony, the fatherin-law of the younger Winthrop, was hanged at London. The noble Sir Henry Vane was hunted down in Holland, surrendered to the English government, condemned and beheaded.

Owing to the partiality of Cromwell, the restrictions on colonial commerce which bore so heavily on Virginia were scarcely felt by Massachusetts. On the restoration of monarchy a severer policy was at once adopted. All vessels not bearing the English flag were forbidden to enter the harbors of New England. A law of exportation was enacted by which all articles produced in the colonies and demanded in England should be shipped to England only. Such articles of American production as the English merchants did not desire might be sold in any of the ports of Europe. The law of importation was equally odious; such articles as were produced in England should not be manufactured in America, and should be bought from England only. Free trade between the colonies was forbidden; and a duty of five per cent., levied for the benefit of the English king, was put on both exports and imports. Human ingenuity could hardly have invented a set of measures better calculated to produce an AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

In 1664, war broke out between England and Holland. It became a part of the English military plans to reduce the Dutch settlements on the Hudson; and for this purpose a fleet was sent to America. But there was another purpose also. Charles II. was anxious to obtain control of the New England colonies, that he might govern them according to the principles of arbitrary power. The chief obstacle to this undertaking was the charter of Massachusetts-an instrument given under the great seal of England, and not easily revoked. To accomplish the same end by other means was now the object of the king; and with this end in view four commissioners were appointed with instructions to go to America, to sit in judgment upon all matters of complaint that might arise in New England, to settle colonial disputes, and to take such other measures as might seem most likely to establish peace and good order in the country. The royal commissioners embarked in the British fleet, and in July arrived at Boston.

They were not wanted at Boston. The people of Massachusetts knew very well that the establishment of this supreme judgeship in their midst was a flagrant violation of their chartered right of self-government. Before the commissioners landed the patent was put into the hands of a committee for safe keeping. A decree of the general court forbade the citizens to answer any summons issued by the royal judges. A powerful letter, full of loyalty and manly protests, was sent directly to the king. The commissioners became disgusted with the treatment which they received at the hands of the refractory colony, and repaired to Maine and New Hampshire. Here they were met with some marks of favor; but their official acts were disregarded and soon forgotten. In Rhode Island the judges were received with great respect, and their decisions accepted as the decisions of the king. The towns of Connecticut were next visited; but the people were cold and indifferent, and the commissioners retired. Meanwhile, the English monarch, learning how his grand judges had been treated, sent a message of recall, and before the end of the year they gladly left the country. After a gallant fight, Massachusetts had preserved her liberties. Left in the peaceable enjoyment of her civil rights, she entered upon a new career of prosperity which, for a period of ten years, was marked with no calamity.

CHAPTER XV.

MASSACHUSETTS.-KING PHILIP'S WAR.

M ASSASOIT, the old sachem of the Wampanoags, died in 1662. For

forty-one years he had faithfully kept the treaty made by himself with the first settlers at Plymouth. His elder son, Alexander, now became chief of the nation, but died within the year; and the chieftainship descended to the younger brother, PHILIP OF MOUNT HOPE. It was the fate of this brave and able man to lead his people in a final and hopeless struggle against the supremacy of the whites. Causes of war had existed for many years, and the time had come for the conflict.

The unwary natives of New England had sold their lands. The English were the purchasers; the chiefs had signed the deeds; the price had been fairly paid. Year by year the territory of the tribes had narrowed; the old men died, but the deeds remained and the lands could. not be recovered. There were at this time in the country east of the

Hudson not more than twenty-five thousand Indians; the English had increased to fully twice that number. A new generation had arisen who could not understand the validity of the old titles. The young warriors sighed for the freedom of their fathers' hunting-grounds. They looked with ever-increasing jealousy on the growth of English villages and the spread of English farms. The ring of the foreigner's axe had scared the game out of the forest, and the foreigner's net had scooped the fishes from the red man's river. Of all their ancient domain, the Wampanoags had nothing left but the two narrow peninsulas of Bristol and Tiverton, on the eastern coast of Narragansett Bay.

There were personal grievances also. While Alexander lived he had been arrested, tried by an English jury and imprisoned. He had caught his death-fever in a Boston jail. Another chieftain was apprehended in a similar way; and then the Indian witness who appeared at the trial was murdered for giving testimony. The perpetrators of this crime were seized by the English, convicted and hanged. Perhaps King Philip, if left to himself, would have still sought peace. He was not a rash man, and clearly foresaw the inevitable issue of the struggle. He hesitated, and was affected with great grief when the news came that an Englishman had been killed. But the young men of the tribe were thirsting for bloody revenge, and could no longer be restrained. The women and children were hastily sent across the bay and put under the protection of Canonchet, king of the Narragansetts. On the 24th of June, 1675, the village of Swanzey was attacked; eight Englishmen were killed; and the alarm of war sounded through the colonies.

4. Within a week the militia of Plymouth, joined by volunteer companies from Boston, entered the enemy's country. A few Indians were overtaken and killed. The troops marched into the peninsula of Bristol, reached Mount Hope, and compelled Philip to fly for his life. With a band of fugitives numbering five or six hundred, he escaped to Tiverton, on the eastern side of the bay. Here, a few days afterward, they were attacked; but lying concealed in a swamp, they beat back their assailants with considerable loss. The place was then sur

rounded and besieged for two weeks; but Philip and his men, when brought to the point of starvation, managed to escape in the night, crossed the bay and fled to the country of the Nipmucks, in Central Massachusetts. Here the king and his warriors became the heralds of a general war. The slumbering hatred of the savages was easily kindled into open hostility. For a whole year the scattered settlements of the frontier became a scene of burning, massacre and desolation.

After Philip's flight from Tiverton, the English forces marched into the country of the Narragansetts. Here the women and children of the Wampanoags had been received and sheltered. The wavering Canonchet was given his choice of peace or war. He cowered before the English muskets and signed a treaty, agreeing that his nation should observe neutrality and deliver up all fugitives from the hostile tribe. Still, it was only a question of time when the Narragansetts would break their covenant and espouse the cause of Philip.

Greenfield

Northfiel

ticut B

The war was now transferred to the Connecticut valley. It had been hoped that the Nipmucks would remain loyal to the English; but the influence of the exiled chieftain prevailed with them to take up arms. As usual with savages, treachery was added to hostility. Captains Wheeler and Hutchinson, with a company of twenty men, were sent to Brookfield to hold a conference with ambassadors from the Nipmuck nation. Instead of preparing for the council, the Indians laid an ambush near the village, and when the English were well surrounded, fired upon them, killing nearly the whole company. A few survivors, escaping to the settlement, gave the alarm, and the people fled to their block-house just in time to save their lives.

Brook

Deerfield

WhatelyMontague

Hatfield
Northampton O
Hampton O

Holy

MILES

5

10

Westfield

West
Springfield

Springfield

Routh
Hadley

SECOND SCENE OF

KING PHILIP'S WAR.

For two days the place was assailed with every missile that savage ingenuity could invent. Finally, the house was fired with burning arrows, and the destruction of all seemed certain; but just as the roof began to blaze, the friendly clouds poured down a shower of rain, and the flames were extinguished. Then came reinforcements from Springfield, and the Indians fled. The people of Brookfield now abandoned their homes and sought refuge in the towns along the river. On the 26th of August, a battle was fought in the outskirts of Deerfield. The whites were successful; but a few days afterward the savages succeeded in firing the village, and the greater part of it was burned to the ground. A storehouse containing the recently-gathered harvests was saved, and

Captain Lathrop, with a company of eighty picked men, undertook the dangerous task of removing the stores to Hadley. A train of wagons, loaded with wheat and corn and guarded by the soldiers, left Deerfield on the 18th of September, and had proceeded five miles, when they were suddenly surrounded by eight hundred Indians who lay in ambush at the ford of a small creek. The whites fought desperately, and were killed almost to a man. Meanwhile, Captain Mosely, at the head of seventy militia, arrived, and the battle continued, the English retreating until they were reinforced by a band of a hundred and sixty English and Mohegans. The savages were then beaten back with heavy losses. The little stream where this fatal engagement occurred, was henceforth called Bloody Brook.

On the same day of the burning of Deerfield, Hadley was attacked while the people were at church. Everything was in confusion, and the barbarians had already begun their work of butchery, when the grayhaired General Goffe, who was concealed in the village, rushed forth from his covert, and by rallying and directing the flying people saved them from destruction. After the Indians had been driven into the woods, the aged veteran went back to his hiding-place, and was seen no more. Late in the autumn, a battle was fought at Springfield; the town was assaulted and most of the dwellings burned. Another attack was made on Hadley, and a large part of the village was left in ashes. Hatfield was the next object of savage vengeance; but here the English were found prepared, and the Indians were repulsed with heavy losses. The farms and the weaker settlements were now abandoned, and the people sought shelter in the stronger towns near the river.

Philip, finding that he could do no further harm on the northern frontier, gathered his warriors together and repaired to the Narragansetts. By receiving them, Canonchet openly violated his treaty with the English, but to refuse them was contrary to the savage virtues of his race. To share the dubious fate of Philip was preferred to the longer continuance of a hateful alliance with foreigners. The authorities of Massachusetts immediately declared war against the Narragansett nation, and Rhode Island was invaded by a thousand men under command of Colonel Josiah Winslow. It was the determination to crush the Wampanoags and the Narragansetts at one blow; the manner of defence adopted by the savages favored such an undertaking. In the middle of an immense cedar swamp, a short distance south-west of Kingston, in the county of Washington, the Indians collected to the number of three thousand. Into this place was gathered the whole wealth of the Narragansett nation. A village of wigwams extended over several acres of land that rose out