FROM THE ENGLISH KINGS AND QUEENS CHARLES II, JAMES II, WILLIAM AND MARY, TO THE GOVERNORS OF THE COLONY OF CONNECTI- AND OTHER ORIGINAL, ANCIENT, LITERARY AND CURIOUS DOCU- Request To the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, Mass. GENTLEMEN-Fully believing in the utility of giving to the public the historical facts embraced in this work, they being founded upon such evidence, as prove their authenticity, I beg leave to dedicate to the American Antiquarian Society the following sheets. It is intended as a text book of the early history of the Colony. In affixing the name of your society to this publication, and depositing a volume in your Library, I may be enabled to preserve entire, its title page and one volume of the work, long after the book itself shall be forgotton by the present generation. I have the satisfaction, of subscribing myself a devoted friend to your institution. Respectfully Yours, Hartford, September 15th, 1836. R. R. HINMAN. PREFACE. THE Author, or rather Compiler of the following work, publishes it as an act due the State, for the purpose of transmitting to posterity, a correct history of facts and events, which transpired in the early settlement of Connecticutcommencing, even before the falling of the first tree in the forest, by any white man in the Colony. It is a compilation of a correspondence of the Kings and Qeens of England, with the different Governors of the Colony-from the first settlement in Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield, in 1635, for the term of more than one hundred years-embracing letters from the Lords of the Council of trade and foreign plantations; a correct copy of the old patent of Connecticut; letters from the Hon. the Commissioners of his Majesties customs in England; and answers by the Governors, &c. Also letters to apprehend Capt. Kidd, as a pirate, and many other interesting, curious literary communications--among which are twenty-seven questions sent to this Colony by the Lords of the Council of trade in 1679, with the answers of Gov. Leet-which answers are probably as correct early history of this Colony as is extant, and will be highly interesting to all readers. Indeed they are a succinct history of the Colony at that period, as to its navigation, productions, shipping, population, state of society, Indian wars, religion, title of lands, trade and manufactures, &c. And when we contemplate that these answers were written by a Governor of this State, when a Colony, nearly two hundred years since, upon this ground, then occupied by the sturdy trees of the forest, but now covered with stores, banks, public buildings and the splendid private dwellings of the refined population of the City of Hartford-and this, the first publication of most of them, |