hence the town of Saybrook. This fort shut out the Dutch from coming up the river. Eight years later (1644) the Connecticut colony (consisting of Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford) purchased Saybrook, and so got the control of the river from its mouth to the Massachusetts line on the north.

112. Opposition of Massachusetts; reasons for emigration. Massachusetts strongly opposed this movement of her people into the valley of the Connecticut. She regarded it as a secession rather than an emigration. It was in fact the secession of the more democratic part of the Puritan population of Massachusetts. But the authorities had other reasons for opposing this movement: (1) they did not like to see their own slender numbers reduced; (2) they feared that England would hold them responsible for letting the people take possession of a region for which they had no patent; (3) they thought the movement would bring on a war with the Dutch and with the Indians.219 In regard to trouble with the savages, the results showed that their judgment was correct.

The Cambridge emigrants gave as their reasons for going: first, that they needed more room for pasturing their cattle e; secondly, that if they did not seize the Connecticut Valley there was great danger that the "Dutch, or other English" might. Finally, they declared that it was "the strong bent of their spirits to remove thither.” 220

The phrase "strong bent" was doubtless a mild way of expressing the determination of the leaders of the movement to establish a new government, which should more fully represent their own ideas. Hooker was opposed to religious tests for suffrage. He advocated broader and more tolerant principles in both religion and politics than those held by the authorities in Massachusetts.221

After long debate a reluctant kind of half-assent was given to the emigration, but on the condition that Massachusetts should appoint commissioners to control the Connecticut set

tlers. To this the emigrants agreed, but in less than a year they had become self-governing.

113. War with the Pequots; the destruction of the Pequot fort; results.-The settlers at Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford had hardly got their log-cabins completed when they were obliged to unite in a campaign (1637) against the savages. It was the first war with the Indians in New England. The ferocious Pequots — a tribe that could muster nearly a thousand warriors- were determined to drive the English from the rich valley of the Connecticut.

Captain John Mason of Windsor led (1637) his valiant little army of ninety men against the savages. Captain Underhill of Massachusetts joined him with a force of about twenty Several hundred friendly Narragansetts and Mohicans went with the expedition.

more.

"222

Mason and Underhill, with a total attacking force of less than four-score men, burst into the Pequot fort (on Pequot Hill, near what is now Mystic). They set the wigwams on fire, and in a few minutes the whole Indian village was a sheet of roaring flame. When the terrified savages rushed madly out of their blazing wigwams, Mason and Underhill "entertained them," as the latter says, "with the point of the sword." Out of six or seven hundred Pequots, only "about seven escaped." The remainder of the tribe, who were entrenched in a second fort a few miles distant, fled westward in despair. All summer they were hunted down like wild beasts. In the autumn (1637) the miserable remnant of this once powerful people surrendered. The colonists gave part of the prisoners to the Mohicans and Narragansetts; the rest they sold as slaves to the West India planters. The destruction of the Pequots secured forty years of peace to the New England settlers, and opened the way to the rapid settlement of Connecticut.

114. Mr. Hooker's sermon; the Connecticut Constitution; laws respecting suffrage. In the spring following the victory over the Pequots, the Reverend Mr. Hooker preached a mem

orable sermon (1638) before the General Court of Connecticut. He declared that the foundation of every just government must be laid "in the free consent of the people," who alone had the right not only to choose, but to limit the power of their rulers. 223

The next January (1639) the Court framed a “Body of Fundamental Laws" based on the republican principles which Hooker had laid down. Such was the origin of the first written, and purely republican, constitution made by Americans for Americans (§§ 43, 80). It did not mention either King or Parliament, but derived its powers solely from the "free consent" of the governed.

This constitution required that the Governor of Connecticut should be "always a member of some approved congregation." 224 That meant that he must be orthodox in religion. But the Connecticut authorities, unlike those in Massachusetts, did not restrict the right to vote to church-members.

A number of years later an act was passed (1657) forbidding Quakers and other "loathsome heretics" from settling in the colony, 225 About the same time the right of suffrage was limited to persons who had once held office or who owned property to the value of £30.226

The laws were liberal for that day. Roger Williams was a welcome guest at Hartford," and there "never existed a persecuting spirit in Connecticut." 227

115. New Haven Colony (1638) a republic founded on the Bible; the Laws of Moses. Meanwhile a new colony had been planted (1638) at New Haven. In many respects it differed widely from the Connecticut colony. Its founders were Theophilus Eaton, a London merchant, and the Reverend John Davenport, a Puritan minister of the "straitest sect.'

" 228

In 1639 the settlers held their first town-meeting. They voted: (1) "that the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men"; (2) "that churchmembers only shall be free burgesses." 229 These ordinances were declared to be unalterable.

The settlers then chose twelve men, who in turn chose, from among themselves, the "Seven Pillars." These seven, by mutual agreement, formed the first church of New Haven Colony, and also the first court of justice. They appointed the civil officers of the commonwealth and decided who might be permitted to vote.

A few years later (1644) the General Court ordered that "the judicial Laws of Moses," as laid down in the Old Testament, should be the rule for dealing with all offenders. These laws, which resembled those of Massachusetts, inflicted the penalty of death not only on the murderer, but on the presumptuous sabbath-breaker, the wilful blasphemer and the stubborn and rebellious son.230 All trials were conducted before the seven judges; trial by jury was not allowed. 231 There is no evidence, however, that capital punishment was ever inflicted except for wilful murder, and for the commission of one or two revolting crimes. 232 In England at this date no less than thirty offences of which sheep-stealing was one were punished by the hangman's halter.

116. Establishment of a free school (1642) and of a college (1701); the regicides. Meanwhile (1642) the colony of New Haven had ordered a free school to be "set up" (§ 93), and to be supported out of the public money of the town.288

Two generations later (1701; after New Haven and Connecticut had long been united) tradition tells us that ten ministers, zealous for the cause of sound knowledge and sound orthodoxy, met at Branford, near New Haven. Each brought a few books, saying, "I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony." Such was the humble beginning of what is to-day "Yale University." It was the second in order of birth of the great New England institutions of learning. 234

When Charles II. came to the throne, Whalley and Goffe, two of the judges who had signed Charles I.'s death warrant,

fled to Boston. Thence the "regicide judges" went to New Haven. 235

The Puritan colonists of New England naturally sympathized with men who had given the death-blow to that royal tyranny which had driven them to seek homes in the New World. The Reverend John Davenport concealed the fugitives in his own house. In a sermon full of fervor he bade his congregation obey the Scripture command: "Hide the outcasts, betray not him that wandereth." 236 The emissaries of the Crown offered large rewards for the capture of the regicides, but no one, however poor, would give information respecting them. The King never succeeded in laying hand on these two men who had helped to send his father to the block.

117. The Connecticut Charter (1662); New Haven united with Connecticut; Andros and the charter. In 1662 Charles II. granted a charter to the Connecticut colony, which incorporated (1665) the New Haven colony with the other settlement.237 The Connecticut charter was a remarkable instrument. It made the people of that commonwealth "independent except in name." They could elect their own governor and legislature, enact their own laws (provided they should not be contrary to the laws of England), and administer justice without appeal to the English courts. The charter imposed no restrictions in matters of religion or worship.

It was as liberal in its gift of territory as in its political concessions. It secured to this virtual American republic a strip of land about seventy miles in width, extending from a point a little west of Narragansett Bay in one unbroken line. across the continent to the Pacific. By these generous terms Connecticut embraced, like Virginia and Massachusetts, nearly one-eighth the circumference of the globe.

In 1687 Governor Andros, in pursuance of his instructions from James II. (§ 100), demanded the surrender of the Connecticut charter, and went with a military retinue to Hartford to obtain it. The authorities protested, but Andros was unyield