Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I, Part 20

Author: Morgan, Forrest, 1852- ed; Hart, Samuel, 1845-1917. joint ed. cn; Trumbull, Jonathan, 1844-1919, joint ed; Holmes, Frank R., joint ed; Bartlett, Ellen Strong, joint ed
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: Hartford, The Publishing Society of Connecticut
Number of Pages: 600


USA > Connecticut > Connecticut as a colony and as a state; or, One of the original thirteen, Volume I > Part 20


Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31


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The third governor of Connecticut under the charter was Robert Treat; he was born in England in 1622, and came with his father to America at an early age. He became a res- ident of Milford when he was nineteen years old, and upon the consolidation of the two colonies he removed to New Jer- sey and became one of the founders of Newark. He returned to Connecticut in 1672, took an active part in King Philip's War, and was elected governor in 1683, and by re-election held the office fifteen years, when he declined to be again a candidate. During his gubernatorial career there was a hiatus of about eighteen months, when the affairs of the col- ony were administered by Sir Edmund Andros. Governor Treat lived to reach nearly fourscore years and ten. He was the beau-ideal of a gentleman; a planter whose hospitality was proverbial, a courageous and sagacious military leader, a conservative and able executive officer, noted for his piety, and for his domestic and social qualities.


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CHAPTER XIX


THE ROYAL GOVERNOR


T HE nominal headship of the colonies lay with the Crown of England. The actual manage- ment after the Restoration lay with the two councils afterwards consolidated as the Lords of the Committee of Trade and Plantations, the Colonial Office of the time; and the controlling superior of that board was the Duke of York, afterwards James II., who gave constant attention to colonial matters, and was as active and purposeful as his brother Charles was idle and indifferent. It is perhaps hard for Americans to be quite just either to the policy or the character of the king who tried to re-establish Roman Catholic supremacy in the old England, and erect an arbitrary government in the new; we certainly are unfair to his purpose if we judge of his action from our own standpoint alone. It may have been a mistake for him to desire a given thing when we desired the opposite, but it is not necessarily an indication of unrighteous intent. Be- fore deciding that to term him a dull bigot and tyrant is to say the last word on his traits and work, it is fair to recall that he established for his province the excellent and tolerant "Duke's Laws," which had all merits except freedom, the one quality it was not in any Stuart to appreciate; and that the colonial officials he sent over were no profligate or needy favorites to whom the colonies were flung as spoil, but among the ablest and most upright of all their class in America. Whatever their limitations, Nicholls, Andros, Nicholson, and Dongan were neither corrupt, rapacious, cruel, nor even self-indulgent. It is true that Percy Kirke must be charged to his account, as an intention, but a glance at the list will show Kirke's credentials. All James' appointees were sol- diers first ; he loved stiff soldiers too well, and took their ad- ministrative capacity too much on trust. It is creditable to


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his judgment, not usually considered his distinguishing trait, that he was misled so little. As to Edward Randolph, wheth- er James selected him or let the committee do it (as is most likely), he was merely a small sharp jack-in-office, whose prime function was to pick the desired quarrel with the col- onies. All governments use such tools for such work, and pay them out of the victims' pockets when possible.


James' policy was probably injurious, and certainly of- fensive; but it was certainly not intended as the first, and probably not specifically as the second. His methods were characteristic of his hard narrow unpliable temper, and of the dislike of popular power bred in the Stuarts by the expe- rience of centuries, and not mitigated by that of the previous generation; but his scheme was neither ill-meant nor unstates- manlike. To convert a set of small scattered "plantations," half encircled by dangerous Indians backed by a formidable colonial foe, into a strong colony under an able commander, cannot be thought a discreditable plan; and it was intended to benefit them as well as England. Most of the other meas- ures were considered necessary means to this end, or to over- come resistance; they are to be judged by the merits or de- merits of that end, not their own. If the objects were justifi- able, the means were so; if not, their obnoxiousness is so much the more to be debited against it. They involved more rev- enue; but the taxation to produce this was not to enrich the royal exchequer (which even so would not have been crim- inal, for it was much embarrassed), but to provide for the colonial system. The enforcement of the navigation laws would have been a blight on New England commerce, as al- ways; but down to the Revolution, that section never ques- tioned the necessity of this policy for any home government, or its abstract rightfulness, and merely refused to endure it


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as applied to itself. The press censorship (which however merely transferred the English system to the colonies), the restriction of town meetings, the refusal to let any one to go to England (i. e. to make complaints) without a license, were probably Andros' own devices, but James must have sympa- thized with them: both had the true martinet intellect, and thought the proper method of shutting off steam was to sit on the safety-valve. The adhesive fingers of Randolph and other instruments or favorites were not indispensable, it is true; but they were inevitable. Fees and perquisites in place of salaries were the almost universal means of paying the civil officials of the day, in England as well as the colo- nies; and perhaps excited more wrath in the latter only be- cause they were less accustomed to being fleeced. At any rate, New England suffered much less than the South, which was actually driven into insurrection by them once, if not twice. The extortions of the Virginia ring around Berkeley most probably helped to bring on Bacon's rebellion; and a century later, the North Carolina Regulators placed this matter of fees in the forefront of their grievances.


It is not necessary to detail the steps by which Massachu- setts lost her charter in 1684. It was the policy of the later Stuarts to abolish municipal corporations : London, the Ber- mudas, and some dozens of other places lost their franchises under Charles. The Lords of Trade believed that the same process could be advantageously applied here; and it sent over Randolph to confirm the idea. Randolph had his for- tune to make out of the country, first by pleasing his masters and reporting what they wished (which doubtless fell in with his own pleasure as a devoted Churchman), and next by liv- ing on it; and he put his heart into both tasks. Massachu- setts ineptly co-operated with him, by ungraciousness and


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open contumacy; but as the richer colony, it might have suf- fered in any event. Connecticut was far too shrewd to in- vite an open conflict, which obviously could have but one ending; and if gracious words and even fulsome expressions of loyalty, doing with eager alacrity what it had no objection to doing, and professing eager alacrity to do what was out of its power, could answer any purpose, would not grudge such inexpensive sacrifices. The memory of Winthrop's winning nature, and the friends he had made at the English court, doubtless played their part. They were needed, for Connec- ticut had plenty of evil-wishers besides Randolph. Massachu- setts wanted one-half its territory, New York the other half. The rulers of the latter were in a chronic quarrel with it; they wished to round out their scattered and straggling col- ony, and Connecticut was not a neighbor with whom to leave fences down. Governor Dongan wrote to the Duke, "Con- necticut was always grasping, tenacious, and prosperous at her neighbor's expense, of evil influence over the New York towns of Long Island, whose refractory people would carry their oil to Boston and their whalebone to Perth, rather than to their own capital."


Charles died on Feb. 6, 1684-5, and the Duke of York ac- ceded. New England received a proclamation of the fact in the middle of April, and the Governor and Magistrates of Connecticut at once had James II. proclaimed in its towns, and sent on an address of condolence and congratulations, praying for "the benign shines of his favor on his poor col- ony." The General Court approved this on its session May 5, and sent another address expressing gratitude for his prom- ise of toleration. That they had no very ardent hopes for themselves, however, and had relied on Charles' personal good-will, is evident from the immediate pains they took to


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protect their grantees before the fate of Massachusetts be- fell them. A corporation, by English law, could only make valid grants under its common seal. Massachusetts had not done so, and when the charter became null the grants became so too. Connecticut had done the same; but, warned in time, ordered all townships which had received grants to take out new ones under the seal of the colony. This done while the charter was in force, even its revocation would not disturb the titles.


James had evidently made up his mind to revoke the re- maining charters as soon as he came to the throne; that he waited till then is fair evidence that Charles' personal feel- ings toward the beneficiaries of his liberal patents were kind- ly, and were decisive. Randolph was ordered to prepare Ar- ticles of High Misdemeanor against Rhode Island and Con- necticut, and sent them to the Lords of Trade in July. Con- necticut was charged with making laws contrary to those of England; imposing fines on its inhabitants; enforcing an oath of fidelity to itself, and not enforcing the oaths of su- premacy and allegiance; prohibiting the worship of the Church of England; refusing justice in its courts; and ex- cluding men of loyalty from its government and keeping the latter in the hands of Independents. Doubtless it had tech- nically committed all these offenses : some from ignorance, some from necessity, some from the nature of Connecticut's raison d' etre. None of them excites any horror now ; whether they warranted forfeiture of its charter then would depend on whether the government wished to exact the forfeiture.


The attorney-general prepared two writs of quo warranto against the colonies, both dated July 8; but one returnable Nov. 19, the other April 19 of the next year, to cover delays. Randolph was to serve them; but he only


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left England nine months later, arrived in Boston May 14, and set up a new government for Massachusetts with himself in it, and Joseph Dudley president of the council. Two Con- necticut men, Fitz John and Wait Still Winthrop, sons of the ex-Governor, were appointed on the latter, pretty cer- tainly by direction from England. The Lords of Trade were not intending an unrepresentative despotism. On the 27th Randolph sent a grossly insolent and bullying letter to the officials of Connecticut, which furnished them much more accurate information concerning himself than concerning his writs, as he abstained from calling attention to the latter having run out. He told them there was nothing left for them to do but resign their charter humbly and dutifully, since if they undertook to defend it at law they would have all western Connecticut annexed to New York at once, be- sides other posible evils. He expected they would not put him to the trouble of coming there "as a herald to de- nounce war," as his "friendship" for them made him wish an accommodation. They were to come to him at Boston, and they need not think of gaining any advantage by "spinning out time by delay," as the writs would keep as fresh as when landed-which was true. This was an excellent self-por- traiture of the petty criminal lawyer turned diplomat; but the gentlemen Magistrates of Connecticut were not Old Bailey criminals. They probably knew already that writs were on the way; and a fortnight before Randolph wrote the letter, they had divided up all the unappropriated lands of the colony among the towns to keep them out of the hands of new royal grantees. Hartford and Windsor at this time obtained most of the present Litchfield County, and had to be bought off when the General Assembly attempted to resume the lands later. The Magistrates now held a special session,


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and sent another address to the King, beseeching him to sus- pend proceedings against the charter, and averring that the light of his countenance was life, and his favor as the cloud of the latter rain. Randolph had seemingly the true Briton's con- tempt for colonial intellects or legal knowledge : on July 20 he came on and served his waste-paper writs himself, calling the secretary (John Allyn) and another keeper of the char- ter (John Talcott) from bed at midnight for the purpose. This was of course in order to impress them with his fierce resolution, and the danger of opposing such invincible deter- mination on the King's part. Probably their remembrance of the Bloody Assizes the year before had a much stronger effect.


Meantime Dudley had written a confidential letter urging annexation to Massachusetts rather than New York, and promising to send two of his council (including Wait Still Winthrop) to confer on the matter. Environed with friends each anxious to administer on its estate for its own good, and ordered by irresistible power to surrender at discretion (for new writs would certainly be issued), there were divided counsels in the colony. We are used to speak of "Connecti- cut's" action, but no political body was ever unanimous, and there were two Connecticuts : one advocating prompt surren- der for fear the King, if provoked, might make Randolph's threat good and partition the colony among its neighbors ; the other resolved not to be openly contumacious, but to give up nothing until it was wrenched away. The former included the official heads, Treat and Allyn, and other chief men of the colony, as Fitz John Winthrop, afterwards governor. In fact, the chosen leaders of Connecticut thought and said that this mulishness was not shrewd politics, but asked for harder terms than otherwise, and loss of all share in the new govern-


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ment. And this was quite true. Chance proved "the fools in the right;" but they had no business to expect it, and by all principles of reasoning from fact the leaders were correct. That the people continued to elect both sections, at logger- heads on the supreme question of the day, indicates this divi- sion among themselves, the undeveloped state of parties, and probably a wholesome confidence that instructed men of af- fairs would work out a better solution than the mass. The numerical majority was against surrender, and appointed William Whiting, a London merchant, son of an old Hart- ford resident, as agent to represent the colony; with power to submit to the King's will if compelled, but meanwhile to employ counsel to defend the cases, and in any case to beg for separate existence and not partition. He did all there was to do : the usual statement that he did no more because he was not supplied with money is very improbable. James was. not a man to let a bribed courtier or a hired lawyer turn aside a purpose fixed for many years.


A new writ was made out on Oct. 23, returnable at the early date of Feb. 9, 1686-7, as it was to be sent on at once. It was forwarded by Sir Edmund Andros, who arrived on Dec. 20 commissioned to assume the government of New England. Two days afterward he sent an express messenger to Governor Treat, empowered to receive the charter; by the same conveyance Randolph sent another of his courteous epistles, telling the officials it would be best for them to com- ply at once. Treat convoked the General Court, which voted. to leave the matter with the Governor and Council. Finally they outlined a reply to Andros, stating that they were very well satisfied to remain as they were, and they did not send. on the charter; and a letter to the English secretary of state,. saying they would be glad to remain as they were if the:


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King were willing, but they must submit to his will, and if he chose to join them to Andros' government as a separate province, they should like it better than to be annexed to any other province. This unsurpassed model of a letter which yielded everything on its face and nothing in law had an ef- fect much greater than the writers can have expected: the government chose to take it as a legal surrender of their rights into the King's hands, dropped the proceedings under the writ, but not letting the Connecticut agent know the fact, and keeping him on tenter-hooks till fall, (with daily expecta- tion of a summons to trial), and on June 18 wrote Andros to assume the power to which the Colony had agreed.


Treat privately wrote to Andros to placate him over the Assembly's holding back; the preceding year he had been anxiously and gratuitously placating Dongan; nevertheless he wished to play the role of Dudley in Massachusetts, and remain on top whatever befell, and so did his fellow magis- trates. None the less they undoubtedly believed they were doing his best for the colony, and we may believe it likewise. Andros replied, remonstrating against the delay, as "hazard- ing the advantages that might be to the colony," and making him incapable of serving it as he would. Andros was a gen- tleman, which Randolph was not, and did no bullying; he was also a much larger minded man, and meant what he said. This correspondence went on all summer, with entire civility of language and unchanging pertinacity of purpose. On March 30 Allyn and Talcott (two of the three keepers of the charter) and the latter's brother wrote to the As- sembly strongly declaring against "all further prosecutions or lawsuits in opposition to his Majesty's known pleasure for our submission." But the majority was not to be shaken, and after several sessions elected officers in the fall as usual. On


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June 15 a curious scene took place at a special session. On motion, the secretary brought in the charter, and was or- dered to take it out of the box and show it, then put it back and leave the box there with the key in it; the court then ad- journed without further direction. Who now kept it, we do not know; nor what the court had in mind. If the majority feared that Allyn might surrender it behind their backs, Treat and Talcott were in the same faction with him.


In May, Andros had sent two commissioners, Palmer and Graham, to Connecticut to work for his interest; they re- ported that the official heads were for them, but the local men would do nothing but wait his Majesty's pleasure. They wrote to Dongan, however, that the Assembly had the sort of consent Andros desired drawn up and signed, when the clergy persuaded them to withdraw it; that is, full liberty of belief in this point. It probably contains that much truth, that the clergy to a man were opposed to the surrender, of which they were to be and were the first sacrifices.


On Oct. 17 the English order of June 18 arrived at Bos- ton; on the 22d Andros' council met at Boston to take ac- tion upon it, and resolved that Andros should go or send "to take the said place under his government" the next week, giving notice to Treat and Allyn first. He sent the notice, stating that he had orders from the King for Connecticut, "annexed to this government," thus treating it as an accom- plished fact. He set out accordingly, with several of his Massachusetts council, and about sixty regular soldiers; passed the night of Oct. 30 at Norwich, and started the next day for Hartford, some thirty-eight miles. As it is a physical impossibility, over the wretched roads and ferryless streams of that time, that this cortege can have reached Hartford before the early sunset (4.35, it being Nov. 10 new style),


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the account of an afternoon session prolonged till after can- dle light is a mistake, or if not, Andros was not at the earlier part of it. He was there when, as Roger Wolcott says, "the Assembly met and sat late at night," in the meeting-house, with his retinue left outside. After (it would seem) elabo- rate arguments from the Council which they knew Andros had no power even to consider, and a long speech from Treat, to no conceivable purpose except to convince the ma- jority he was doing his best for them, the charter was brought in; suddenly the candles were extinguished, and when re- lighted the charter had disappeared. (It has been proved that there was only one copy in Connecticut at the time, not two : the mention of the "duplicate" means merely that there was another copy in England.) Officially it made no differ- ence : if Andros had no charter to take up, the colony had none to fall back on; Allyn wrote on the records that An- dros had taken into his hands the government of Connecti- cut, annexed by his Majesty to the "other colonies under his Excellency's government," and closed the book with "Finis." Connecticut ceased to exist-even the Assembly must have supposed permanently. Still, the opponents of the surrender had perhaps further views than merely the boast that they had never actually surrendered the charter. So long as the colony's legal rights had not been legally abrogated, some- thing might happen for which the charter would be very handy. The writ of quo warranto had not been decided against them; their charter had not been taken up: they were merely absorbed by a royal proclamation which might be rescinded by that King or another, in which case their rights would revert to the old status.


As to what became of the charter, and who took it, the question involves an antiquarian study for which this is no


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place. Recent discoveries have made it apparently insoluble. Roger Wolcott, himself in the Council a generation later, and in a position to obtain first-hand information from the actors, says two copies were brought in and each taken away by a different person; yet there certainly was but one present. Captain Joseph Wadsworth was given in 1715 a public ac- knowledgment (so small as to be almost a burlesque) for saving the charter at a critical juncture; but Wolcott, one of the committee who recommended the grant, says Talcott and Nathaniel Stanley took it, and makes no mention of Wads- worth. The latter was certainly not present at the meeting, and could not have taken the charter from the table; most likely it was passed to him outside. He certainly had posses- sion of it for many years after, up to this public acknowl- edgment; but by this time the other copy had come over, and it had in fact been obtainable at any time if wanted,-a fact which makes the actual achievement of securing the duplicate less momentous, though it does not change the character of the action. Talcott and Stanley were dead at the time of the grant to Wadsworth, or he might not have obtained it. With the remark that very possibly Andros was rather relieved by the disappearance, and that the friends and foes of the sur- render were in a most curious alliance in its abstrac- tion, we leave this branch of the subject. The place of its hiding is even more uncertain: probably there was more than one. There is no reason to discredit the Charter Oak; but it cannot have remained there, and may well have gone into Joseph Wadsworth's house, and not impossibly later to that of Andrew Leete in Guilford for a while, as more secure than Hartford.


The next day Andros called a Council, proclaimed his com- mission, and (by command from England) appointed Treat


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and Allyn councillors; thence he went on to New Haven, Fairfield, and New London, appointing new courts and sher- iffs, and commissioning as justices of the peace all the former Assistants, besides making Allyn a judge. None refused to take the oath : it would have been senseless, and we must not exaggerate the bitterness of the Connecticut people in being absorbed. None of them had any such feeling of outrage and slavery as we are apt to accredit to them : some of them liked it as being more dignified, to be part of a great colony with a powerful head, than to make part of the self-managed parish politics of a small unvalued district; the New Haven Colony people had been absorbed once in the generation, and probably felt that a second absorption could be endured, though they preferred independence. Most people disliked the change, and liked it less and less as time went on; but they did not bear all the evils prospectively, and after all they felt as free Englishmen under their home government.


The actual grievances under the Andros government prob- ably seemed heavier to them than to us now; but we can see that they were very annoying, and some of them burdensome. Andros extended the thirteen laws already passed by him and his council to include Connecticut ; and three or four more were passed later. Most of these were administrative regu- lations, which could arouse no feeling; nor could the laws against piracy, or the bounty on wolves, or the valuation of coins. The objection centered on five of them, two of which were parts of the same; four were practical and one senti- mental-by which is not meant unreal or to be contemned.




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