USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 3 The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut > Part 16
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between the states, for fugitive slaves already were slip- ping into Litchfield, and the bitter divisions of opinion which are reflected in the novels of Mrs. Stowe were separating the people of the county into two camps.
VIII
DAYBOOK "A," now owned by the Yale Law Library, which covers a little more than three of Barzillai Slosson's twenty years at the Litchfield County Bar, ceases with the entries for the September term of County Court in 1798. That record, however, is continued by the four Slosson manuscripts loaned to the Yale Law Library, to which reference is made at the beginning of this article. Three manuscripts loaned by Mr. Leonhard include a volume lettered "Ledger I," the entries of which corre- spond in the main to daybook "A"; "Ledger II" which carries entries from 1798 to 1806, and a few scattered records bearing later dates; and "Day Book VI," which is similar to "A," and records the daily business which Slosson transacted from July, 1809, to the end of the December session of the County Court in 1812. A few pages have been torn from this book, which otherwise, no doubt, would show the last entry he made, for his death occurred a few weeks after that session adjourned. The manuscript loaned by Miss Bull is autographed Barzillai Slosson's Dockett for C. C. & S. C. It contains entries from September, 1794, to March, 1808, and some miscellaneous information; as, for instance, the table of fees which follows:
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TABLE OF FEES
In the County Court
In the
Superior Court
Retainer
£o.12.0 Retainer
£o.18.0
Term Fee
0.18.0 Term fee
I. 4.0
Arguing plea of Abatement I.IO.O
I. 4.0
Demurrer
2. 8.0
The same-with further defence
0.18.0
Arguing Demurrer or peti- tion for New trial
1.16.0
Arguing bill in Chancery
2. 2.0
Motion in arrest of
Silent Appeal including term fee
Judgment
I.IO.O
I. 4.0
Arguing issue in fact
2. 2.0
Bill in Chancery . 4.10.0
-Do on appointment
Auditors
1.16.0
of Auditors
I. 4.0
Arguing remonstrance to
remonstrance to re-
the report of Auditors .
I. 4.0
port of Auditors . . 2. 2.0
Attending Arbitrations
each day £I.IO.O Before a Justice at least nine shillings, and more in proportion to the distance and importance of the cause.
Slosson kept a letter book, also, as certain references show; but he nowhere mentions a "waste book," though many lawyers of his time found considerable use for one. These documents present a very complete record of his business for the first three years; scattering accounts for the years 1798-1806; and a partial record for the last three years of his practice.
The accounts in these additional manuscripts show that Slosson's business increased steadily during the twenty years of his practice. The first term of County Court which he had listed separately, in 1796, was rep- resented by ten entries, and roughly computed, brought him about fifteen pounds in fees. For the last term of which there is a complete record, that of September,
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Arguing Plea of abatement there being no other de- fence in the cause
Issue in fact
· 3. 0.0
Arguing motion in arrest of Judgment
I. 4.0
On appointment of )
1812, forty-five entries are listed and the business trans- acted totaled over two hundred dollars. A comparison of these accounts with the table of fees in the "Dockett Book," quoted above, shows that fees for court cases had increased very little during that time. Retaining fees for both County Court and Superior Court were practically unchanged, and the term fee for Superior Court in 1812, as entries in the daybook show, was usually $5.50. The greatest variation in fees seems to have been in his charge for arbitrations. At first he attended arbitrations for twelve shillings, as entries in the early manuscript show; but later the fee was rarely less than £I IOS., and sometimes, as in the case of one arbitration at Pough- keepsie where he received $16, considerably more. Fees like that, however, and like another which he received from the Middletown Bank where he served for thirteen days as "commissioner to receive subscriptions," and credited himself with $130, were the exception, not the rule, of a country lawyer's practice in Barzillai Slosson's time.
Notes that occur in the ledgers from time to time show that Slosson like many other lawyers, permitted students to enter his office to read law, and that they paid him a fee of forty dollars per annum. The incompleteness of records after the year 1798 makes it uncertain when he first began to take students and how many may have studied with him. There is, however, definite record of seven students between 1801 and 1813, and two of his brothers who became lawyers may also have read law with him.
Though Slosson built up his practice among his neigh- bors in Kent, he eventually had many clients elsewhere in the state, and a considerable number in other states. His last accounts show that cases were brought to him,
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at one time or another, from most of the towns in western Connecticut. He had a good deal of patronage from points across the border in New York, especially in Poughkeepsie. Through his brother William, who was then practicing in New York City, several clients who were interested in business ventures in Connecticut em- ployed him. He handled a few cases for Judge Reeve of Litchfield; and for three of his classmates in Yale, General Peter Buell Porter, Judge Hopkins, and the Reverend Jeremiah Day. He had several clients in Vermont, and a few in the West Indies. So far as the record shows, Slosson had but one client in England, and for that patronage he was indebted to the Reverend Samuel Peters, whose name is associated with the "Blue Law" controversy. The business in which Slosson was em- ployed concerned Kent farms that had been of little use to their English owner since the Revolution. These farms had been purchased by Mr. Richard Jackson of London, sometime British Agent for Connecticut, and the first man who received the Doctorate of Laws from Yale. The land had been farmed industriously, it seems, but the owner received none of the profits. When he made inquiry of Dr. Peters, the latter had recommended Barzillai Slosson.
Collection business and the management of estates had from the first been a source of steady income to Slosson, and his commissions had increased with the value of the properties he managed. It is significant to note that at the time of his death Slosson was still in charge of busi- ness interests which men like Major Talman, Samuel William Johnson, and Colonel Tallmadge had entrusted to him when he first opened an office in Kent. In addition to that, Johnson's interests in the iron works at Ore Hill brought him into constant litigation, and Slosson was
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rarely without some case in which that property was involved.
The business which he transacted for the town of Kent brought him in a small but fairly constant sum each year; and combined with other circumstances to make him one of the leading citizens of Kent, as his father and grandfather had been before him. Like them he was cool and far-sighted, and, again like them, he kept a watchful eye upon expenses. The town, in Barzillai Slosson's time, supported very few persons at public expense; but the legal difficulties which arose in consequence, suggest that Kent's loss, in the number of indigents, may have been the gain of adjoining communities.
IX
SLOSSON's first ledger, among the volumes loaned to the Yale Law Library, contains a record of interest to lawyers and law librarians, the list of books which he possessed after about ten years of practice. This list, which is headed "Catalogue of my Law books, &c.," was probably complete for the year 1806, the date of the last entry, and shows that his library at that time contained about one hundred ten volumes, sixty-four of which were law books.9 No list of works purchased after that time has
9 The law books are: Blackstone's Commentaries, 4 vols., Powell on Mortgages, Powell on Devises, Powell on Contracts, Coke on Littleton (two editions), Strange's Reports, 2 vols., Talbot's Cases, Bacon's Abridgment, 5 vols., Morgan's Essays, 3 vols., Espinasse (two entries without titles), Buller on Trials, Coke's Entries, Swift's System, 2 vols., Coke's Reports, Croke's Reports, 3 vols., Mitford's Pleadings in Chancery, Kirby's Reports, Wyche's Practice of the Supreme Court of New York, Equity Cases Abridged, 3 vols., Root's Reports, Hinde's Chancery Practice, Chancery Reports, Grotius' De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Clerk's Instructor in the Ecclesias- tical Courts, Burrows' Reports, 5 vols., Fonblanque on Equity, 2 vols., Brooke's Abridgment, 2 vols., Grotius, 3 vols., Practice King's Bench, Jones' Law of Bailments, Salkeld, Pothier on Obligations, Caines' Reports, Evans' Essays, Williams' Abridgment, 5 vols.
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turned up among the papers so far recovered, but scat- tering entries in other manuscripts indicate that Slosson was steadily making new acquisitions; law books, nat- urally, led in number, but there were historical works, books of travel, maps, and geographies; and always, of course, his beloved classics. His earlier purchases of law books were made through his very good friend and con- stant client, Ozias Buell, who bought them for him in New York of the old Duyckinck firm of importers. Later he bought from Isaac Beers, the New Haven bookseller and importer, probably when he was attending sessions of the Assembly. After his brother William went to New York to practice law, books were purchased through him; and others reached his shelves, as has been said, in return for professional services. One entry concerning books is of especial interest. Not until after fifteen years of busi- ness, during the greater part of which he also had been a member of the Assembly, did he pass that landmark of gentility, the setting up of a carriage; and the record in his daybook associated that event with another which probably gave him more pleasure:
D C
Bo't carriage & harness of O. D. Cooke & paid him 70 00 Also Shakespeare, & Day's rept's, 2 vols. 10 dolls. & pd. 10 00 As pr. Cooke's bill & receipt 80 00
The last book Barzillai Slosson purchased, shortly before his death, was Homer's Odyssey, in the original.
X
IN the legislation that shaped his period of Connecticut history, Slosson had a characteristically modest part. Though no entry in his daybook reveals that fact, he had been elected to the General Assembly in 1797. He repre- sented the town of Kent for twelve out of the next sixteen
34
years, and was a Clerk of the House in both sessions of 1812. He attended the term of the Litchfield County Court in December of that year, but was taken ill shortly after it adjourned. In failing health for some time and never of a strong constitution, he declined rapidly and died on January 20, 1813, having just entered his forty-fourth year. He was buried on Good Hill near his father's home, in the old cemetery where many of the pioneers of the township rest.
At the time of his death Barzillai Slosson's estate in- cluded much of his grandfather's original allotment in Kent. It was distributed to his heirs, but after the death of his widow and younger son it came into possession of the elder, John William Slosson; and the fine old house that stands near the foot of Flanders Green was occupied by Barzillai Slosson's descendants until near the end of the century. At some time during this long tenure the manuscripts which afford so detailed an account of his law practice were placed-where many years later they were found-between the sloping chimney stacks in the attic, beside some of his well-worn books of Latin and Greek.
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The Printing-Office of the Yale University Press
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
٢٢٠
QUI
SUSTINET
TRANSTULIT
COMMITTEE ON
HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
XLVIII DOUBLE NUMBER
The Rise and Fall of the New Haven Colony
CHARLES M. ANDREWS
PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1936
Copyright 1936 by Yale University Press
This pamphlet publication is comprised of chapters from the forthcoming second volume of the writer's The Colonial Period of American History, to be published by the Yale University Press, and this material is here used by per- mission of the publishers. For the purpose of this series and because of the importance of the subject for the Tercentenary celebration, this period of beginnings has been treated here at somewhat greater length than will be the case in the larger work. All footnotes, references to authorities, and comments on controversial questions have been omitted.
The Printing-Office of the Yale University Press
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
XLVIII The Rise and Fall of the New Haven Colony CHARLES M. ANDREWS
"THE colony of New Haven is the ideal laboratory in which to study the germ of Puritanism; only there can it be isolated and put under the microscope .. . New Haven was the essence of Puri- tanism, distilled and undefiled, the Bible Commonwealth and nothing else . .. Massachusetts contained too many other elements besides Puritanism; it was too large and too complex to achieve in practice an absolute and rigorous working out of the a priori phi- losophy of Puritanism; Connecticut grew up in too haphazard a fashion; Plymouth was too plebeian, in addition to being Separa- tist, to be completely uncontaminated."I
D URING the years when Connecticut was laying the foundation of its government and expanding into a commonwealth, a new ex- periment was being tried on the shore of Long Island Sound, forty miles to the southwest of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor. The defeat of the Pequots had removed the danger of Indian aggression in that quarter and had brought the whole coast within the scope of settlement by Englishmen. Until 1638 the seaboard
I Perry Miller, author of Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630-1650, in a re- view of The New Haven Colony by Isabel M. Calder (New England Quarterly, December, 1935). Mr. Miller goes on to say, "Because Miss Calder is fully
I
was a wilderness frontier, unoccupied save by the inhabit- ants of the fort and lands at Saybrook and by the Nehantics, Quinnipiacs, Hammonasetts, Menuncatucks, Paugassetts, and other native tribes stretching eastward toward the Narragansett territory. This eastern stretch of coast had become known to those who had taken part in the Pequot wars and to others seeking opportunities for trade with the Indians. Its lands were remote from the communities already settled but were easily ap- proached by water, as their harbors, though often blocked by silt, were more open than was the mouth of the Con- necticut River. The Dutch had sailed along the shore in their visits to Buzzard's Bay and Plymouth harbor and had noted promising ports and rivers, offering favorable sites for forts and trading houses. There is reason to be- lieve that they planned to erect stations at advantageous points, fronting the harbors at Fairfield, Milford, and Guilford, and the river mouths at the entrance of the Quinnipiac, Connecticut, and Pequot rivers, as well as upon the islands in Narragansett Bay. But the only out- come of their efforts was the House of Hope which was established in 1633 on the southern side of the rivulet flowing into the Connecticut at Hartford. However
aware of this ultimate significance, she has written an admirable, solid, and definitive study of the community . . . The book is more than a mere history of one settlement; it is a study of a type, in the one place in which the type is found most perfectly incarnated, and the implications of that study are im- portant not only for New Haven, but for all New England and for Puritanism in general . . . The book is, therefore, one of a few secondary works that are absolutely indispensable for an understanding of early New England."
The writer of this pamphlet, who is here attempting the difficult task of presenting in a comparatively few pages the essential features of New Haven's nearly twenty-seven years of independence, gladly acknowledges that he owes more to Miss Calder than she has ever owed to him, even though she wrote the book under his direction, because of the facts that she has so dili- gently gathered and the understanding she has displayed in their interpreta- tion.
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promising the shorelands may have been for commercial enterprise because of the water connections, they were not well suited to agriculture and stock raising because they were only moderately fertile and varied greatly in value and availability for farm purposes.
The year 1635 in England was fraught with discourage- ment for Puritan and parliamentarian alike. The writs of ship money had been issued and the trial of Hampden was under way. The Laud Commission was beginning what was feared would be a work of inquisition at home and in the colonies, and the courts of High Commission and Star Chamber were being charged, probably un- justly, with illegality and oppression. In general the out- look for a restoration of the parliamentary system was discouraging. The writ of quo warranto against the char- ter of Massachusetts Bay had been issued and there were fears of worse things to come. Migration to New England increased. The Puritan lords and gentlemen, beginning to think seriously of crossing the seas, sent over John Win- throp, Jr. to prepare a refuge in America at the mouth of the Connecticut River for them and possibly for others among the parliamentary leaders. Groups of the non- conforming clergy and their followers were yielding to the necessity of leaving England, and were going either to Holland or to New England. This impulse was strong among those who were feeling the weight of Laud's dis- pleasure and who, already rebelling against the ritualistic tendencies of the Church of England, saw in Laud's efforts to beautify the church service and to enforce the religious uniformity required by the act of 1559 an offense against the organization of the primitive church as set forth in the Bible. Every vicar of an English parish church was potentially a plantation builder, for he was more than the spiritual head of his flock; he was a par-
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ticipant also in the prudential and secular affairs of the parish. The administration of an English parish gave to vicar, vestry, and parishioners just the sort of experience needed to prepare them for founding a settlement on New England soil. It is not surprising that the villages there should have reproduced in their local practices and methods of administration many of the details of organi- zation and land distribution with which their founders were familiar in their previous life at home.
The history of the colony of New Haven begins with the vestry meetings of the church of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, London, of which for thirteen years the Rev. John Davenport, Bachelor of Divinity of Oxford, was the vicar and influential head. He had been the curate of the neighboring church of St. Lawrence Jewry, under the eaves of the Guildhall. The selection of a vicar was in the hands of the parishioners, with the approval of the Bishop of London, but the parish vestry by an in- genious adjustment of salary was able to neutralize the bishop's influence and to control the situation them- selves. This position of independence gave to the parish considerable experience in handling its own business and to Davenport and his leading laymen an apprenticeship that stood them in good stead when they came to America. During his first years in the ministry at St. Lawrence Jewry, a highly ritualistic church, Davenport adhered sympathetically to the ordinances and discipline of the established system and obtained an excellent reputation for conformity. At St. Stephen's he added to this reputation celebrity as a popular preacher, with the ability to attract followers, particularly among the "common and mean people" as well as among the well- to-do merchants of Coleman Street ward. St. Stephen's was situated in the midst of a prosperous and strongly
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non-conformist community, a veritable Puritan strong- hold, where lived or forgathered many of those who were interested in the activities of the Virginia and Massachu- setts Bay companies, and were closely associated with the mercantile interests of the day. After studying the en- vironment in which Davenport and his associates lived and worked, one need not wonder that the New Haven colony took on a mercantile character or that trade and commerce should have been in their minds the chief con- cern of the new settlement. Unlike the promoters of other plantations in New England these men were not born and reared amid the manors and fields of old England and never took to farming as a natural and familiar voca- tion. Neither did the New Haven people ever succeed in becoming successful agriculturists.
Davenport was interested in the Virginia Company of London and although he may actually have become a member, the identification of the name is far from certain. However he did become a member of the Massachusetts Bay Company, contributed £50 toward the procuring of its charter, and took an active part in that company's proceedings. There is nothing to show that at this early date (1629) he was interested in any plan of migration, though he showed his sympathies by serving as clerk of the meeting of the company at which Winthrop was elected governor and was present on at least one later occasion. Theophilus Eaton, whose father had baptized Davenport at Coventry, became an assistant of the com- pany and contributed £100. Others, also, of St. Stephen's parish were members-Spurstowe, Rowe, Aldersey, Crane, White, and Bright-so that the intentions of the signers of the Cambridge Agreement to transfer company and charter to America must have been well known to him. It is but natural that when the time came he and those
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1 1
0
who went with him should at first have looked nowhere else than to Massachusetts Bay.
As early as 1627 Davenport had begun to attract the attention of the ecclesiastical authorities and was brought, with three other ministers, before the Court of High Commission for printing an appeal for funds to aid the persecuted Protestants of the Upper Palatinate, a cita- tion that cannot have increased his affection for the Church of England. He fully expected to be deprived of his pastoral charge even then, but the blow did not fall, for Laud, whose influence in Davenport's life began with his elevation to the See of London in 1628, was not in- clined to trouble himself with minor infractions of the rubrics, and it was not until he found the Puritans en- gaged in buying up ecclesiastical benefices in lay hands and appointing to them incumbents of their own per- suasion that he took action. Davenport was one of those engaged in this business and Laud saw in it an attempt to undermine the strength and unity of the Church of England. The conviction that this attempt would even- tually fail and that reform from within the church was hopeless, combined with growing doubts about con- formity, had influenced Davenport, in the years 1632 and 1633, to join the group of the non-conformists to which Cotton and Hooker belonged. It is reasonably clear that Cotton was instrumental in shaping Davenport's opinion and it is quite likely that Hooker had a hand in it also. Cotton had fled from Boston in Lincolnshire in 1632 and joined Davenport in London, thus beginning that long friendship between the two men which was to display itself so richly during their life in New England.
Though Davenport was not ready to resign his vicar- ship, he was fast reaching the conclusion that his services for St. Stephen's were over and that it would be necessary
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for him to leave England because of his conversion to non-conformity. Unwilling to cause any public disturb- ance and much perplexed as to the lawfulness of conformity he wanted to free himself from his former connections with as little trouble as possible and, as far as he could, without affecting the peace and prosperity of his parish- ioners. Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633, and unlike his predecessor George Abbot, brother of Maurice Abbot of Coleman Street and St. Stephen's, he had no Puritan sympathies. When Juxon succeeded Laud as Bishop of London, Davenport saw the High- Church world closing about him. Cotton and Hooker were ready to leave. Withdrawing for the moment, for a brief period of retirement, he finally offered his resigna- tion, which the vestry unwillingly accepted, probably in April, 1633, and in December left England for Hol- land, offering himself there as the assistant of the Rev. John Paget, minister of the English church at Amster- dam. Undoubtedly he had every intention of returning to England when the storm had blown over. But Paget and Davenport fell out over the question of the baptism of the children of unbelievers and the dispute, heightened by the hostile efforts of Stephen Goffe, chaplain in the Netherlands of the English regiment under Vere, ren- dered it certain that he would not receive a formal call to the assistantship of the church. After he had aided Paget for five months and preached privately for four, he re- moved to Rotterdam as Hugh Peter's assistant. There it was that the project of the Puritan lords and gentlemen for the settlement of Saybrook came under discussion and there it was that Peter and Davenport persuaded Lion Gardiner to enter the service of the Warwick grantees, while Peter himself accepted the agency with John Winthrop, Jr. and the young Harry Vane. Conditions in
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