USA > Connecticut > The history of Connecticut, from the first settlement of the colony to the adoption of the present constitution, vol. I > Part 17
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 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43
* Trumbull, i. 232, 233 ; Holmes' Annals, i. 309, &c.
198
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
that he had been a blacksmith, but asserted that he had re- cently become a farmer, and had sold all the tools that he formerly used in carrying on his trade, and had not reserved enough "to repair a gun lock or make a screw pin." He represented that he had intended to settle in Pequot with the other planters, but that he could not suit himself so well there as he could upon the salt marsh at Pawcatuck, where he could find an immediate support for his cattle. He de- clared that he did not go there to live alone because he was a heretic or a heathen ; and that he believed in the truth as it was taught in the New England churches. He did not expect when he went there, to live a great while alone, for he supposed others would soon follow him.
His arguments did not satisfy the court, yet upon his giving bonds for his good behavior, and with the assurance that he would get a respectable company to live with him before the next winter, they suffered him to remain .* His- torians have conspired with the court to wrong him.
Thomas Minor in 1653 became an inhabitant of Pawca- tuck. In 1657 the General Court appointed a committee, at the head of which was John Winthrop, Esquire, to meet at New London, and compare the differences between that plantation, and the people of Mistick and Pawcatuck.} By this it appears that considerable accessions had already been made to the population of the disputed settlement. In 1658 several families removed there. Captain George Denison, Thomas Shaw, and two men of the name of Palmer, were among the early planters.
In 1658 the commissioners decided that the river Mistick should be the boundary line between the two jurisdictions of Massachusetts and Connecticut. Thus Pawcatuck be- came a Massachusetts town, and took the name of Souther- ton. It was known by that name, and continued under the government of Massachusetts until after the royal charter of Charles II. was granted to us, when it became a part of Connecticut. In 1665 the General Court decreed that the
* Trumbull, i. 235 ; Caulkins' New London, 99, 100. +J. H. Trumbull, i. 300.
199
DEATH OF GOVERNOR WELLES.
[1660.]
place should be called Mistick, in commemoration of Mason's victory. In May 1666, by a like order, the name of the town was again changed to that of Stonington, which it has ever since continued to bear .* It has been the rugged nurse of some of the most gallant and heroic men, who have done honor to the State during the French and Indian wars, and during the more bitter and sanguinary struggles that belong to a later day. The sons of Stonington, like those of New London, have for several generations gone down to the sea in ships, and done business on the great waters.
The names of Welles and Webster, at the election of 1660, no longer appear in the roll of the magistracy. During the year, one had dropped " like ripe fruit seasonably gath- ered," into the silent grave. The other had sought a home in Massachusetts, where he died in 1665. Thomas Welles and John Webster, venerable names, both governors of Con- necticut, whose virtues are still perpetuated in those who in- herit their blood. The dust of Welles rests with that of Wyllys and Haynes in the old cemetery at Hartford, without a stone to mark the spot.
Some time during the year 1657, while the old feud between the Narragansetts and Mohegans still raged with unabated fury, Pessacus advanced suddenly upon the coun- try of his enemy, shut up Uncas in his fort, and kept him there in a state of siege until his situation seemed hopeless. Hopeless it might have been to any other Indian, but Uncas was too fruitful in expedients ever to despair. He contrived, as a last resort, to send runners to Saybrook fort to inform the garrison of his critical situation. He bade them tell the English that famine and the sword were impending over him and the whole Mohegan tribe, and that the most fatal consequences would result to the English, should their old friends be destroyed. The wily politician had hit a very sensitive nerve. Thomas Leffingwell, an ensign at the fort, on learning this piece of intelligence, immediately loaded a canoe with provisions, paddled it from the mouth of the Con-
* Caulkins' New London, 104, 106, &c.
200
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
necticut to that of the Thames, and, under the friendly . screen of night, passed up the river, and supplied the famish- ing Mohegans with food. Thus recruited the beleaguered chief made such a sudden and furious attack upon the panic- stricken Narragansetts, that he drove them through the woods, and down the rocks with the most complete and terrible slaughter.
We are told, though I know not upon what authority, that for this daring exploit of Leffingwell, resulting in the salvation of the Mohegan tribe, Uncas gave to his deliverer a deed of nearly the whole of the present town of Norwich. However this might be, and it is not unlikely, it is quite cer- tain that in June, 1659, Uncas went to Saybrook, and there gave to the English company, that was probably formed as early as 1653, for the settlement of a town on the head waters of the Pequot river, a deed of a tract of land at Mo- hegan, nine miles square. Nothing was said in the convey- ance about any old debts of gratitude to be canceled ; and the consideration of the deed was not love and affection, but seventy good pounds. This was the second time that the prudent vendor had sold it to the English, and taken the money for it, unless he had also in a fit of gratitude deeded it to Leffingwell. Major Mason was at the head of the company formed at Saybrook for the founding of a new town. There were thirty-five members of this company, who signed its articles of association, and thirty-eight original settlers. A few hardy men spent the winter of 1659 in temporary huts on the new purchase.
In the spring of 1660, the Rev. James Fitch, Major Mason, Mr. Huntington, Gifford, and the other members of the association, embracing the principal part of Mr. Fitch's church and congregation, removed to the fair plain lying in the folds of the swift Yantic, that coiled itself around it as the bright-eyed serpent holds the bird, in a delightful though inextricable enchantment. The first inhabitants were men of rare merit, and of good family, as may be seen by their names that have been honorable in the state. Among them
201
NORWICH.
I may mention Tracy, Griswold, Smith, Allyn, Howard, Hyde, Waterman, Backus, Bliss, Reynolds, Caulkins, and Reed. These are not all, but the genealogist and town historian have preceded me. The high, sharp ledges of rocks that left their sombre shadows on the vale, or some- times hid their sternest features behind the trees that shook their quivering leaves above the river, and its then copious tributaries, while they lent their romantic beauty to the town, served also to screen it from the winter winds, as the Mohegan chief and his bronzed warriors protected its in- habitants from the Nihanticks and the Narragansetts. Here the fathers of Norwich dwelt content in their " happy valley," without once dreaming, perhaps, that their aspiring sons, like the Prince of Abyssinia, would never rest until they had sought the hill-tops whence they might look off upon a wider world .*
* The present city of Norwich is on a commanding eminence, and affords one of the finest views in New England.
CHAPTER X.
THE CHARTER.
WE have now reached a point in our journey where we may pause for a while and take a brief retrospect.
With the year 1603 closed the reign of Elizabeth. The remainder of the first quarter of the seventeenth century was occupied by the bigot king, James Stuart .* The next quar- ter of a century we behold signalized at different periods by the most whimsical tyranny and reckless violation of the faith plighted over and over again, on the part of king Charles I., and by acts of violence, the natural consequence of such behavior, on the part of the people, consummated by that awful spectacle then unknown in the civilized world, and followed as a precedent but once from that day to the present-that of a maddened and misguided people sitting in judgment upon the life of their sovereign. Then follow the few stern years of Cromwell's dominion, from whom Say and Seal, whose aid Charles had tried in vain to buy with the lure of tempting offices, turned away his face with equal pride and greater loathing-a dominion that can be regarded by the right minded as useful only in the same sense that destructive earthquakes are, that throw down the walls of cities, or fires that consume their old and tottering edifices, and thus make way for more solid masonwork, and more graceful and useful structures.
This brings us-for why should we stop to speak of the imbecile protectorate of Richard, or the deep and secret game played by Monk, that led the way with such caution to a new state of things-this brings us to the long desired restoration.
* James I. reigned from A. D. 1603 to 1625 ; Charles I., his successor, occu- pied the throne from 1625 to 1649, having been beheaded on the 30th of Janu- ary of the last named year.
.... .. .......
203
REVOLUTIONS IN ENGLAND.
These first sixty years of the century were teeming with events of the most momentous consideration in their bearing upon the future destinies of mankind. No wonder, that amid such convulsions at home, revolutions chasing one an- other as wave follows wave to the shore, the English govern- ment should have lost sight of that handful of men who, year after year, under the shade of the mighty forest trees, stole away from the provincial government at Boston, and set up a new jurisdiction for themselves on the Connecticut river and along the sea-shore, as well of Long Island as of the main-land. Nor is it a thing to excite our surprise, that the planters of Connecticut, who sometimes turned their eyes from their absorbing employments-the taming of wild na- ture or wilder men-to steal a hurried glance at the dusty arena where England struggled for the freedom that she finally won, should have come at last almost to forget their allegiance to the mother country, and should have half im- agined that in the recesses of their retirement they were be- yond the ken of British statesmanship and out of the pale of British authority.
It is not likely that the framers of the constitution of 1639 ever entertained the idea of maintaining a government inde- pendent of the crown, although they did not think it neces- sary or expedient to take upon themselves the voluntary ac- knowledgment of a jurisdiction that was sure to thrust itself upon them as soon as they could desire to bear its burdens. It is possible, too, that they kept themselves in abeyance for the time when England, bowed down by her calamities, could no longer stretch her shortened sceptre across three thousand miles of ocean.
Let these planters have reasoned as they might, the restor- ation of 1660, which brought tranquillity to England and en- abled the king to look abroad upon the outer borders of his empire, soon taught them to reflect upon the growing impor- tance of Connecticut, which could not fail to tempt the cu- pidity of a monarch whose extravagant habits and empty exchequer called loudly for subsidies. Besides, they were in
204
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
the midst of dangers: the Dutch on one side, the Indians on the other, and the powerful colony of Massachusetts not far off, of whose growing importance they had always enter- tained such suspicions as weak states must invariably harbor against those that are more powerful. The king had suffer- ed all the hardships of proscription and exile, and was now, at the commencement of his reign, most anxious to please all classes of his subjects. He was a Stuart, and with increas- ing prosperity his love of prerogative, the ruling passion of his father and grandfather, might grow upon him and tempt him to trench upon their liberties. What time so favorable as the present ?
Accordingly on the 14th of March 1661, while the good- natured king yet bore his honors with a modest face, the General Court of Connecticut determined to make a formal avowal of their allegiance to the crown, and apply for a char- ter. A very humble and graceful acknowledgment they made of it. They now very sedulously called the common- wealth that they represented, a colony, and avowed that all its inhabitants were the king's faithful subjects. The court also made an appropriation of five hundred pounds to prose- cute the petition with energy .*
In May the Court again met, when a petition to his most gracious majesty was presented by governor Winthrop for their consideration, and was cordially approved. But in order that no form of respect might be wanting, and no rea- son that could be assigned might be left out of the paper, or fail to have its proper weight from being imperfectly stated, the deputy governor, Mr. Wyllys, Mr. Allyn, Mr. Wareham, Mr. Stone, Mr. Hooker, Mr. Whiting, and the Secretary, were associated with the governor as a committee to amend and still further perfect it. These gentlemen were also au- thorized to write letters to such noblemen and other eminent persons as they should see fit, with the design of procuring aid in bringing the application to a favorable issue. The
* Colonial Records, i. 361.
205
APPLICATION FOR THE CHARTER.
[1661]
Court appointed governor Winthrop the agent of the colony, to repair to England and present the petition to the king, and to see after the general interests of Connecticut. He was particularly instructed how to proceed in the business, and was especially directed to procure, if possible, the aid of Lord Say and Seal, and the other still surviving proprietors under the old patent .*
With such a committee and such a man as Winthrop at its head, it is not surprising that a very strong case was made out, and stated in the petition with uncommon ability. How the lands had been purchased of the Indians at infinite labor and cost, or won from them as the prize of victories gained by the colonists at the hazard of their lives, and how they had subdivided the territory thus obtained and reduced it to a state of culture that made it, with the increased popula- tion that then inhabited it, a most valuable addition to the resources of the king's empire, were all stated with such full- ness and force that they could not fail to attract the royal notice, seasoned as they were with the insinuating language of homage and flattery.
At the same time a letter was written to Lord Say and Seal, who, notwithstanding his dislike of Charles I. and Cromwell, had become reconciled to Charles II. and was known to possess the king's confidence, reminding his lord- ship, by an indirect allusion, of the project that he had him- self once entertained of emigrating to America, and of the influence that he had exerted upon the colonists, in holding out such inducements as his presence and patronage would be to them, to remove thither to prepare the way for his coming. They further informed him at what a dear rate they had purchased of Colonel Fenwick the fort and lands that he had sold to them under a threat that, if they refused to buy upon his own terms, he would transfer his title to the Dutch; and that they paid the exorbitant price of sixteen hundred pounds for what they thus bought, because they were under such restraints as placed it out of their power
* Colonial Records, i. 368, 369.
206
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
to make the contract upon any terms that were more favor- able. They called to the mind of his lordship their weak- ness and their exposed situation, with the powerful and grasp- ing colony of Massachusetts on their northern border, and how impossible it was for Connecticut to settle her boundary lines either upon the north or upon the west without the lim- itations and authority of a charter. They begged him to as- sist governor Winthrop in the enterprise that they had so much at heart .*
Thus commissioned and instructed, the agent of the col- ony set sail in August for England, to execute the important trust that had been confided to him. When he arrived in England, he made immediate application to Lord Say and Seal to aid him in gaining a favorable hearing of the king. That venerable nobleman was at that time unable to go up to London on account of a severe attack of the gout, that prostra- ted his powers and unfitted him to attend to his duties at court. Yet, true as he ever had been to his old friends in Connecti- cut, for whom he always manifested the highest regard, not more on account of their religious sentiments than because he was himself at heart a republican, he wrote an urgent let- ter to the earl of Manchester, then Lord Chamberlain, the most spotless character of that corrupt age, whose sympa- thies for the people of New England corresponded with his own, desiring him to lend his powerful influence to the ap- plication. Lord Say and Seal was the only nobleman then surviving who had been a grantee in the original patent. His letter to Winthrop, bearing date December 11, 1661, evinces the kindest and most delicate interest in the welfare of the colony. t
Say and Seal had kept aloof from public life during the protectorate, which he abhorred more than he shrunk from the tyranny of Charles I., and had remained for a long time in haughty retirement at the isle of Lundy, where he lived more in the style of a king than of a subject. But he became
* For a copy of this letter see Trumbull, i. 513, 514.
This letter may be found in Trumbull, i. 515.
207
LORD SAY AND SEAL AND WINTHROP.
[1661.]
at last tired of his magnificent obscurity and, like many others who had struggled to free England from a galling yoke, had become sated with the horrors of war, and weary of the delays, the inefficiency and the bigotry of the parlia- ment. With these views he had not been idle in lending his powerful aid to the efforts of Monk and Clarendon, in bring- ing back the exiled king. Nor was Charles unmindful of the part that his noble subject had taken in the train of compli- cated circumstances that led to the restoration. He reward- ed him for his fidelity by making him Lord privy Seal .* The interposition of such an ally in behalf of Connecticut, seconded by the efforts of the Lord Chamberlain, could not fail to have weight with the easy, vacillating monarch, who, in his best estate, though obstinate, had never possessed an independent will, and who had already begun to commit the care of his kingdom to his ministers, while he yielded him- self up a too ready victim to the soft dalliance of courtly pleasures.t Connecticut was also exceedingly fortunate in the choice of her agent. Not another man in New England was so well fitted as Winthrop to bring this delicate mission to a successful result. His naturally flexible and graceful mind had been cultivated by a careful education at Cam- bridge and Dublin, and his manners, in addition to the spark- ling endowments of nature, had been fashioned by the then rare accomplishment of an European tour, with abundant leisure to observe and study the elegant refinements of the higher circles in the various countries that he visited, and with the noble self-control to abstain from indulging in their vices.į Besides, he had made himself familiar with the new world as well as with the old. Its streams, unfettered by commerce, save that of the canoe with its light freight of skins, winding through woods that had already become the theme of many an enchanting fable; the habits of the wild men who frequented those woods ; their laws, their modes of subsistence, of waging war, of making treaties, and their in-
* Camden's Imperial Hist. Eng., ii. 216; Trumbull, i. 248.
t See Wade's British Chronology, 220, 221. # Brancroft ; Allen.
208
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
tercourse with the English ; the game that abounded there ; the noisome serpents that startled the traveler from his lonely trail with hiss or rattle-all afforded an inexhaustible field whence an ingenious mind could extract, in details of anec- dote and adventure, the honey of discourse ; and who was more likely to listen with a pleased ear to the agreeable nar- rator of such wonders, than the boyish, fun-loving king ? who more likely than Winthrop to cause the full, flashing eye of Charles Stuart to dance with merriment second only to that which flowed from the exhilaration of the wine-cup, or cause it to dilate sometimes with a pleased sympathy such as could merge for a moment the ambition of mistress Palmer in a softer passion, or tame to a feebler fluttering the gentle heart of Nelly Gwynne .*
An English gentleman, however accomplished, who had lacked the interesting experience that afforded Winthrop the opportunity to excite the curiosity and play upon the imag- ination of his sovereign, might have failed, as a man of unre- fined manners, however well his memory might have been stored with facts relating to American life, certainly would have done; for the monarch had inherited not a little of his father's fastidious refinement, though it was gradually soiled and finally lost in the debaucheries of a later day.
With all these happy advantages, Winthrop might perhaps have failed in accomplishing his purpose but for a simple ap- peal to the filial piety of the king. He had in his keeping a ring of rare value, that had been presented to his grandmother by the unhappy Charles I. This ring, as if to set the seal to the favorable impression that he had made, he humbly proffered to his royal master. The king's heart melted at the sight of this touching memorial that brought to his mind the dark hours and sorrowful fate of the noble donor, who had most need of such a loyality as that gift betokened. With a gracefulness that rendered his munificence doubly wel-
* The influence of these artful courtesans over the opinions and acts of Charles II. was often observable in public affairs. See Camden's Imperial Hist. of England, ii. 221 ; Wade, 229.
209
THE PATENTEES AND THE PATENT.
[1662.]
come, he accepted the ring and granted the prayer of the colony .*
On the 23d of April, 1662, letters patent under the great seal received the royal signature, giving to the petitioners the most ample privileges. ; They confirmed in the patentees the title and jurisdiction of the whole tract of land granted to the earl of Warwick in free and common socage, and to their successors, forever. The names of the patentees in the charter were John Winthrop, John Mason, Samuel Wyllys, Henry Clarke, Mathew Allen, John Tapping, Nathan Gold, Richard Treat, Richard Lord, Henry Wolcott, John Talcott, Daniel Clarke, John Ogden, Thomas Wells, Obadiah Bruen, John Clarke, Anthony Hawkins, John Deming, and Matthew Canfield-nineteen in all-to whom, together with all the other freemen of Connecticut then existing, and who might afterwards be admitted electors or freemen to the end of time, were given the irrevocable privileges of being "one body corporate and politic in fact and name, by the name of the governor and company of the English colony of Connecticut in New England in America, and that by the same name they and their successors should have perpetual succession."
By these letters patent they are made persons in law, may plead and be impleaded, defend and be defended, in all suits whatsoever ; may purchase, possess, lease, grant, demise and sell, lands, tenements, and goods in the same unrestricted manner as any of the king's subjects or corporations in Eng- land. They are annually to hold two general assemblies- one on the second Thursday in May, and the other on the second Thursday in October-to consist of the governor, deputy governor, and twelve assistants, with the more popu- lar element of two deputies from every town or city.
The company or colonial corporation thus constituted, might choose a common seal, establish courts for the admin- istering of justice, make freemen, appoint officers, enact laws, impose fines, assemble the inhabitants in martial array for the common defence, and exercise martial law in all necessary
* Trumbull, i. 248. + A copy of the charter is to be found in the appendix (B.)
14
210
HISTORY OF CONNECTICUT.
emergencies. It is especially provided that all the subjects of the king within the colony shall enjoy all the privileges of free and natural subjects of the realm of England, and that the charter shall be construed most favorably for the benefit of the corporation. John Winthrop is named in it as the first governor, and John Mason deputy governor, and the other patentees whose names are mentioned are to be the first magistrates. All these appointees are to hold their offices until the people shall elect new ones in their places.
Such, in its substance and main features, was the charter granted by Charles II. to the colony of Connecticut. . Al- though it bore date the 23d of April, yet as nothing was known of it in Connecticut until several months afterwards, the regular routine of the government meanwhile went on under the old constitution. In May, the freemen met as usual, and held their election. Although the deepest anxiety must have pervaded the public mind in reference to the probable fate of Winthrop's mission, yet we find no traces of it upon our colonial records. The Court proceeds with its usual calmness and sobriety to provide for the domestic economy of the inhabitants, and to relieve the burdens that appeared to fall too heavily upon the weaker towns.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.