USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 3 The Beginnings of Roman Catholicism in Connecticut > Part 19
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struction also and have done boatbuilding as need arose. Private wharves and warehouses appear as conveniences for landing and storing-the wharves for the small craft of their owners or for the landing boats of larger vessels from Massachusetts, New Amsterdam, Virginia, Barba- dos, and England lying in the harbor. These outside vessels brought manufactured goods, hardware, canvas, rum, sugar, cotton, salt, tobacco, and wines, while the New Haven towns shipped provisions, cattle, horses, and a variety of sundries, though a surplus of such staples was always limited, and in times of scarcity, as in 1653, foodstuffs were placed under embargo. The one effort that was made to open up a direct trade with England was a disastrous failure, for the vessel, perhaps the first large boat built in New Haven, promoted by Theophilus Eaton, Goodyear, Malbone, and Gregson in 1645, com- manded by Captain Lamberton, and laden with an elabo- rate cargo, foundered at sea and was never heard of again. All the ventures, running from £50 to £80, which were put into this, the "phantom ship," and into the Fellow- ship of 1647 (another New Haven venture) were either lost entirely or were greatly depreciated in value.
That the promotion of trade during the first twenty years had not met the expectations of the merchants concerned is evident from Davenport's remarks made in 1659 and 1662. Speaking in town meeting on the ques- tion of granting East Side (Fair Haven) and South End (East Haven) the status of villages he said that "if the town did not consider of some way to further trade, how would they subsist he saw not." In 1662 he said further that unless the town could do something "to bring ship- ping yearly from England . . . and so rayse manufacture" its inhabitants could not long subsist. He wished by mak- ing liberal grants of land to encourage merchants from
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other colonies or England to come to New Haven for the encouragement of trade. The effort was not successful, as but one merchant, Samuel Bache of Boston, came to New Haven and set up a warehouse, and that too not until after 1665, when New Haven gave in its submission to Connecticut.
The simple truth is that despite the ambitions of the founders, the towns of the New Haven jurisdiction never were more than small agricultural communities in a region that was not well adapted for agricultural pur- poses. Their layout and the methods followed in the dis- tribution of their lands differed only in detail from those of other New England plantations and the life of the great majority of the people was closely and intimately connected with the soil. In order of size New Haven came first, followed by Milford, Guilford, Stamford, Southold, and Branford, with two dependent communi- ties, Paugasett (Derby) and Hashamamock (near South- old). The people inhabiting these plantations were mainly English, with a few Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Scotsmen, Negroes, and Indians, the last named of whom in New Haven lived on the east side across the Quinnipiac River. In status these inhabitants were freemen or church mem- bers, free planters, indentured servants, and apprentices, and in vocation, merchants, mariners, farmers, artisans, and hired laborers. There was also a transient element among them, not much wanted but very much needed, made up of wanderers from other colonies and seamen brought in by the ships frequenting the harbors, a roister- ing, rowdy lot that made New Haven as well as Massa- chusetts a great deal of trouble.
All these people were carefully watched over by the local town meetings which kept a vigilant eye on the affairs of their respective communities. They looked after
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fences, cattle, swine, sheep, and horses, doing something but not much for fences and highways, and endeavoring, with considerable effort and frequent prodding, to build and repair bridges, of which there were many. They pro- vided, with difficulty because of frequent neglect, for ward by day and watch by night, guarding against fires within and attacks from without. To protect themselves further against fires they required householders to keep ladders at hand and to have their chimneys frequently swept, the chimney sweeps to wear canvas frocks and hoods. They regulated the cutting of timber for building and firewood, and frequently complained of the "stink- ing and noxious weeds"-henbane, nightshade, and poke- weed-that grew along the roadsides and in the fields. Each town had its trainband, though training was none too popular, worked out with discrimination exemptions from the service, and struggled with the disorders that regularly arose on training day. There was a view of arms four times a year and a training at least six times and oftener if necessary.
While agriculture and its incidents occupied a large part of the time and attention of the people in the various towns, industry remained in a very primitive state. There were gristmills everywhere, but no sawmills, saw- ing being done in the simple way of a saw pit. The grist- mill in New Haven-an overshot affair-was a subject of endless concern, both as to maintenance and supply of water, and when it was burned down in 1662, the proposal was made to change its construction to that of a windmill and horsemill, such as was known to exist at Easthampton. There were a number of tanneries or tan- yards, but at best leather was poorly prepared, shoes were insufficient in supply, inexact as to sizes, and badly made, and both tanners and shoemakers came in for con-
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siderable abuse. Probably much of the artisan work of bakers, hatters, blacksmiths, coopers, carpenters, rope- makers, wheelwrights, dishturners, and the like was done at the houses or barns of the workmen or in shops on the premises. The bakers were often charged with under- weight loaves and so serious had this offense become that an assize of bread was inserted in the Code of 1656. This was the London assize, which New Haven adopted, just as she adopted the London assize of hogsheads, Winchester measures of dry and liquid volume, avoirdu- pois weight, and the London steelyard. There were shops also in private houses and there were stores where a vari- ety of goods was sold, such as could not be produced at home and had to be brought from abroad. Liquor was available at the ordinaries and in limited quantities at private houses, and the licensing problem was one of periodic perplexity. Manufacturing activities were of necessity infrequent because of the scarcity of raw material. The only manufacturing industry known to the colony was that of the ironworks at East Haven, though we hear of a promise of steelmaking emanating from Southold in 1655.
Business transactions of every kind must have been greatly hampered by the want of a convenient and flex- ible medium of exchange. Hard money, whether in the form of English shillings, Dutch guilders, or Spanish pieces of eight, was always scarce, though there must have been a certain amount brought in by ships from England or gained in traffic with New Amsterdam and Barbados. There is no mention of silver in the records of the colony until 1651 when contributors to the church funds were urged to pay in silver or bills because the wampum was so bad that "the officers who receive it can make litle of it," and until 1654 when the widow Wiggles-
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worth loaned the commissioners going to Boston five pounds. Even after these dates we come on very few in- stances of its use. In the early years black and white wampum was almost the sole medium, particularly in private transactions, until it became so poor in quality that it would not pass current and so much of a drug in the market as to lose much of its value, despite the efforts of the general court to stabilize it. Barter and payments in kind became increasingly common-corn and other grains, cattle, wool, pease, beef, pork, bread or "biskit," and even brass and iron passed at local prices fixed by the Boston traders. Rates, taxes, and imposts were met by "good currant country paye at cuntry price" deter- mined by the authorities. In 1657 Winthrop paid for his house £100 in goats from Fishers Island, the town to send a ship to carry the "cash" to New Haven.
But while land, fences, debts, and prudential affairs generally were matters of concern to the town fathers, manners and morals, having to do with the peace of the community and the problem of sin, weighed most heavily on their minds. Drunkenness and sexual misdemeanors were "horrible miscarriages," for which those guilty were held accountable before God as well as the courts, and they were inquired into with a minuteness of scrutiny that has made it necessary, in the case of sexual mis- deeds, for the editors of the town and colony records to omit from the printed pages several portions of the original text. Such offenses were bad enough when com- mitted by a nonfreeman, but when a church member was involved, whether in fornication or drunkenness or in disrespect toward an assembly where "the holy God and the holy Angells were present," the act was construed as scandalous and the offender was reprimanded by bell, book, and candle. The ultimate end of justice was the
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reformation of man and the averting of the wrath of God, and its immediate purpose the preservation of peace and righteousness, the prevention of disorder, and the settlement of differences among neighbors. The attainment of such results was worthy of the utmost vigi- lance. Many lesser indulgencies, such as cardplaying, dancing, and singing, were frowned on and in part at least forbidden, because they tended to the corruption of the youth and the "mispense of precious time," but they were enjoyed on the sly by those who had known the merry life of old England and were repelled by the cheerless atmosphere of the Puritan colony. Smoking was allowed but not in public, and one man who was found "taking tobacco" near the meetinghouse was promptly fined. A large number of the sinners were ser- vants and seamen: the former always an unmanageable lot, generally in some sort of mess, thieving, cursing, swearing, drinking, and quarreling, and guilty, a few of them certainly, of bestiality and other abominable crimes; the latter given to intoxication, disorder, and profana- tion of the Sabbath. The laws were vigorously enforced and numbers of persons were executed for adultery, witch- craft, and deeds of "unspeakable filthiness." Occasion- ally one or another would be banished for good and suffi- cient cause from the jurisdiction while those guilty of ordinary misdemeanors would be punished by stocks, pillories, fines, whipping, imprisonment (where they were "kept to a prison diet"), and by such humiliating public penances as the wearing of a halter for a given length of time.
On the cultural side education alone received atten- tion. Davenport very early expressed his interest in a school and a college and wanted to gather books for the use of the ministry and the town. In 1641 it was proposed
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to set up a free school, the cost of which was to be met out of the common stock of the town. This was done, a schoolhouse was built, and a schoolmaster engaged. But the experiment languished. The ambitious programme for the teaching of English, writing, and especially Latin dwindled to a course of spelling and reading; the number of pupils fell as low as six or eight and then five and six; and the results were not commensurate with the trouble. In 1660 it was proposed to erect a "Colony School," and at first the plan seems to have been to set up feeding schools in each of the plantations, but this was soon seen to be beyond the resources of the colony. Then it was decided to create only a single "Colony School or College," for the teaching of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and to locate it at New Haven. For this purpose Edward Hopkins made his famous bequest of part of his estate in New England, from which in time was to arise the Hopkins grammar schools of Hartford and New Haven, "for the service of god in Church and Commonwealth," the whole amounting to £1,000, four hundred of which was to go to Hartford. But as events were to prove, the Hopkins bequest was diverted from its original object and a collegiate school was not to appear until the next century, then to bear the name not of Davenport but of Elihu Yale. The suggestion made in 1664 that a library building be erected for the "many books belonging to the town" was never carried out. The books were prob- ably those left by Samuel Eaton in 1656 "for the use of a college," but which reverted to the town on the failure of that project. It constituted what may be called "the first public library in New Haven."
On the architectural side we have little reliable infor- mation regarding the buildings in which the householders lived, beyond the contemporary statement that many
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of the merchants' houses were pretentious. The meeting- house on the green in New Haven was fifty feet square, with a tower and a turret, and casement windows with glass panes. It was in constant need of repair and its vari- ous vicissitudes find frequent reference in the records. It had a platform, with rails and banisters, built upon its roof in 1653, for "one to stand upon to make discovery of danger that might be neere," and within were the seats, a large gallery with a little gallery adjoining, and a high pulpit with stairs. Built in 1640 it began to show signs of decay by the end of the decade and by 1657 was called very defective-groundsills and timbers, ceiling, tower and turret, doors and windows needing constant attention. Nothing was done beyond repairs until 1670 when a new structure was put up. Upon its door, as was the custom with the parish churches of England, all pub- lic notices were posted-for the town as yet had no sign- post, and near by in the market place stood the drummer to summon the inhabitants to meeting on lecture days, days of humiliation and thanksgiving, and the Sab- bath.
Until 1660 the position of the town and jurisdiction of New Haven was strong despite its economic weakness and legal insecurity, though its inhabitants were not all living in perfect harmony. There had been murmurings as early as 1653 and 1654, at the time of the threatened war with the Dutch. Inhabitants of Stamford, Southold, and Milford voiced their discontent with the form of government under which they lived, demanding an ex- tension of the suffrage, the admission of English law, and the right of appeal to England. Robert Basset in the Stamford town meeting declared that he would obey no authority except such as came out of England, and he and others dubbed the jurisdiction a tyrannical govern-
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ment, under which no justice could be obtained. The ringleaders at different times were haled before the gen- eral court of the jurisdiction and charged not only with disturbing the peace of their respective towns but also with words and carriage against the colony at large. They were accused of attempting to undermine, overthrow, and alter the foundations of authority, to turn things "upsidowne" in church and commonwealth, and to stir up rebellion, thus breaking their oaths of fidelity. All were reprimanded in language that was severe unto righteousness-the language of the pulpit-and were heavily fined and put under bonds to answer before the court of magistrates. All submitted and acknowledged their sin and the trouble was over.
The general court took advantage of the opportunity to see that all the people in the jurisdiction were bound by oaths of fidelity and that the deputies from the towns to the general court of the jurisdiction took a special oath to "doe Equall right and Justice in all cases" that came before them, using their "best skill and knowledge according to the wholesome laws here established." Thus did they hope to make the colony watertight against further disaffection, and for the moment they succeeded, though financial conditions did not improve, and efforts to expand the area of the jurisdiction by the inclusion of Southampton, Huntington, and Oyster Bay ended in failure. New Haven's dream of a colony that should embrace Long Island within its limits went the way of its dream of a commercial center and capital on the banks of the Delaware. By the year 1660 the juris- diction was probably already on the downward grade less ably manned, less economically prosperous, and less united in the fundamentals of religion and government than it had been in the period immediately following the
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reorganization of 1643. It was badly prepared to meet the crisis which now arose.
In 1660 Charles II returned to the throne of England. Davenport refused to believe the report of this when it was brought to his attention and could only exclaim, when he could no longer doubt its truth, "Our comfort is, that the Lord reigneth and his counsels shall stand." With apprehension and dismay he heard of the execution of such old friends as Peter and Vane, of the deaths in the Tower of Pennington and Rowe, and of the persecu- tion and flight of his former colleague in the church at New Haven, William Hooke. He viewed with alarm the new migration which now took place from England, bringing to the colony not only many who echoed Hooke's remark, "I know not what will become of us, We are at our wit's end," but others also such as the regicides Edward Whalley, Hooke's brother-in-law, and William Goffe, who had been exempted from the act of amnesty passed by parliament in 1660. The flight of these men to America was followed by orders from England for their apprehension brought over by agents instructed to ferret out the fugitives. In consequence the New England Puritan colonies were placed in the embarrass- ing situation of either repudiating their former friends or disobeying the royal command. Massachusetts with a somewhat unexpected but shrewd display of wisdom, declared her abhorrence of all who would aid those "convicted of having a hand in the execrable murder of the late king" and ordered the arrest of the two men. The latter left the Bay hurriedly and passing through Con- necticut went directly to New Haven, where Davenport, with more conscientiousness but less wisdom, was ready to receive them. Though the royal agents, Kellond and Kirke, warned Governor Leete that in protecting the
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"two traitors they would do themselves injury and pos- sibly ruin themselves and the whole colony," New Haven and Milford harbored the regicides and in so doing ham- pered the agents in their efforts to find them.
All the New England colonies, after some delay, recog- nized Charles II as king of England, but only Massa- chusetts, New Haven, and Rhode Island formally pro- claimed him in a public demonstration. The other two, Connecticut and Plymouth, contented themselves with votes of acknowledgement only, perhaps for the reason that no order to make a public proclamation was ever sent over by the Privy Council. But all of them felt the imperative necessity of taking advantage of the royal amnesty issued from Breda and of soliciting the king's favor, each in its own behalf. Massachusetts had many charges lodged against her, for her enemies rose up in this emergency to call her contumacious and perverse, and she in particular needed to act promptly. She sent over Simon Bradstreet and John Norton, with an ad- dress written by Governor Endecott. It was couched in characteristic Puritan language and in a spirit of unc- tious humility that would certainly have amazed Charles II, had he ever read it, as undoubtedly he never did. Connecticut followed suit, sending John Winthrop, Jr., to plead her cause, but New Haven, who perhaps more than any of the others had reason to fear the weight of the king's displeasure, was in no position to follow the lead of her sister colonies. She was too poor to meet the expense of an agency and not sufficiently sure of her own record to approach the throne with a petition for royal privileges. Therefore, she first turned to Massachusetts, explaining her delay in proclaiming the king and asking that Massachusetts would present her case to the crown. She suggested the appointment of a common agent,
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offering to bear a part of the expense. We do not know the Massachusetts answer, but it was probably unfavor- able. Then Governor Leete turned to Connecticut with the proposal that Winthrop should say a good word for her in England and obtain, if he could, a single patent that would cover both jurisdictions and contain for New Haven a grant of land "beyond Delaware." In this way she hoped to gain what she had been unable to obtain for herself, that is, a foothold on the Delaware, and to throw upon the mother country the burden of ousting the Swedes and Dutch from their possessions on the river. Unfortunately Winthrop had already sailed in July and Governor Leete could do no more than send the letter to Boston to be forwarded to Winthrop in Eng- land. It is doubtful if the latter ever received it.
The Connecticut authorities had already instructed Winthrop to ask for a grant of territory that should ex- tend from the Massachusetts and Plymouth boundaries to "the Delaware River South," thus completely ignor- ing the claims of Rhode Island on one side and of the Dutch and Swedes on the other. Whether also at this time they were deliberately planning the extinction of the independent jurisdiction of New Haven cannot be said, but at any rate.it is strange that in neither of the instructions to Winthrop (for there were two) is there any mention whatever of New Haven, though the boundaries asked for included the territory of this friend- ly and autonomous Puritan state, Connecticut's fellow member in the New England Confederation. Whatever else can we think but that as early as 1661 Connecticut had determined to absorb New Haven if she could? In her letter to the Earl of Manchester she speaks only of her own need of a patent to strengthen herself "against such as may oppose of prsent interests in civil policy,"
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and in all the negotiations that were carried on in Eng- land, as far as they have been recorded, neither she nor Massachusetts said anything about New Haven's claims. Winthrop, petitioning on Connecticut's behalf, asked for a patent for Connecticut only and for the territory bounded "on the south by the ocean." Why was New Haven so entirely ignored? Were her people "such despised ones," as Leete meekly called them, that they were beyond the consideration of their neighbors, or were they out of sight and consequently out of mind because unrepresented by an agent of their own at Whitehall? These questions can never be satisfactorily answered, but it is a suggestive fact that of the four colonies that were charterless in 1660, the two that got no charters were those that were too poor to send agents to England. This may be a sufficient explanation, but the suspicion will always be latent that Connecticut had made up her mind to adopt an aggressive policy from the start and to emulate Massachusetts not only in ob- taining like privileges and liberties but also in adding to her territory at the expense of her nearest neighbor. Massachusetts was extending her jurisdiction to the north, why might not Connecticut extend hers to the southward as well, as far as she could?
From the beginning New Haven's position was hope- less. As news of the Restoration came to the malcon- tents in the towns of the jurisdiction, opposition once more became vocal. One Francis Browne uttered many contemptuous and reproachful speeches against the government, denying the magistrates' authority now that the king was proclaimed, and refusing to obey laws that had not come out of England. There were others too of like minds, who not only questioned the legality of the jurisdiction but chafed under the limitations of the
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suffrage and looked with longing eyes toward the wider privileges of Connecticut. In October, 1662, a month after the latter colony had received its charter, a ma- jority of the inhabitants of Southold withdrew from the New Haven jurisdiction and submitted their persons and estates to the authority of the newly chartered govern- ment. Several people of Guilford followed suit and Stam- ford and Greenwich went over bodily. Connecticut ac- cepted these overtures and appointed constables for the revolting towns. Within the jurisdiction, men were re- fusing to accept office-either entirely or only for a year-because of "the distraction of the time" and the uncertainties of the future. Many arguments were used by those who were endeavoring to hold the jurisdiction together, but "they prevailed not." The general court realized "that there was a great discouragement upon the spiritt of those that were now in place of magis- tracy," but it knew of no other remedy than to summon the obdurate persons before it for examination and to bind them over to appear before the court of magistrates as disturbers of the peace. By the end of 1662, the juris- diction had shrunk to but a fragment of its former size, for only Milford, Branford, and New Haven remained, and even in those towns there was discontent. Milford did not break away until 1664, Branford remained loyal to the end, and in all the towns there continued to exist groups of those who still adhered to the fundamental principles upon which the colony rested. Officially the jurisdiction was still alive and possessed of sufficient strength to resist the Connecticut demands, New Haven and its leaders refusing "to breake or conclude anything that may have tendencie to change of the present govern- ment."
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