June 25. tion was made at a court held by four of the Counsellors. They took the oaths of office and of allegiance to the Lord Proprietary, appointed subordinate officers, and disposed of some causes, criminal and civil. The Deputy-Governor, arriving soon after, found the official residence at Agamenticus scarcely sufficient to give him shelter, and "nothing of the household stuff remaining but an old pot, a pair of tongs, and a couple of cob-irons."1 George Burdet, formerly the mischief-maker at Dover, now a person of consequence in the capital of Maine, was arrested by Gorges under a charge of adultery and other offences. The demagogue, convicted and fined, set sail for England with threats of ven- September. geance, which, on his arrival there, he saw the futility of attempting to execute. 1641. June 25. The Province was divided into two counties, of one of which Agamenticus, or York, was the principal settlement; of the other, Saco. The annual General Agamenticus Courts were appointed to be held at the latter and Saco. place, while the former was distinguished both by being the residence of the Deputy-Governor, and by the dignity of incorporation as a borough, under the hand of the Lord Proprietary himself. The greatness of April 10. York made it arrogant; and it sent a deputation of aldermen and burgesses to the General Court at Saco, to save its metropolitan rights by a solemn protest. The Proprietary was its friend, and before long exalted it still more by a city charter,3 authorizing it and its suburbs, constituting a territory of twenty-one square miles, to be governed, under the name of Gorgeana, by a Mayor, twelve Aldermen, a Common Council of twenty-four members, and a Recorder, all to be annually chosen by the citizens. Probably as many as two thirds 1 Williamson, I. 283. 2 See above, p. 517. 3 The charters are in Hazard, I. 470, 480.- When Gorges constituted York 1642. March 1. a city (Ibid., 481), he of course meant it to be the seat of a bishop, for the word city has no other meaning in English law. of the adult males were in places of authority. The forms of proceeding in the Recorder's Court were to be copied from those of the British Chancery. This grave foolery was acted more than ten years. Theophilus We pass to the opposite extremity of New England, where, simultaneously with the settlement at Aquetnet, another community was erected, of a different character from any of those which have been mentioned in this or the last chapter. Theophilus Eaton has already been named as a member and Assistant of the Massachusetts Company. The son of a clergyman at Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire, he had risen to opulence in London, and had attracted the notice of the government, by which he was sent in a diplomatic capacity to Denmark. He was a parishioner of John Davenport, minister of St. Stephen's Church, in Coleman Street, London. Davenport, son of a Mayor of Coventry, in Warwickshire, was an Oxford graduate, and a clergyman of so much eminence as to have attracted the special notice of Laud, who mentions Jan. 2. him in a letter to the king. Driven by the proceedings of that prelate to resign his cure, he was for some time preacher to an English congregation at Amsterdam. By John Cotton, with whom he had kept up a correspondence, he was induced to turn his thoughts towards America; and at Davenport's instance — at all events, in his company-Eaton came to New England, arriving there, with a number of friends, "in two June 26. ships," at the height of the troubles of the Antinomian controversy and the Pequot war. John Daven port. 1634. 1637. The habits of thought of this fraternity led them to carry out to its last results the idea which had fascinated so many thinking persons at that period, of finding in Scripture a special rule for everything of the nature of civil as well as of ecclesiastical order and administration; 1 See above, p. 303; comp. 484, note 2. and, for the experiment, they desired a more unoccupied field than was to be found at that late hour in Massachusetts.' Having taken some months for inquiry and deliberation, they in early spring set forth by water to Emigration Quinnipiack, an inviting site, on a commodious to Quinniharbor of Long-Island Sound, thirty miles west of the mouth of Connecticut River. The company included two ministers besides Davenport, namely, Samuel Eaton and Peter Prudden. piack. 1638. March 30. April 15. Their voyage occupied a fortnight. Under the shelter of an oak, they kept their first Sabbath, listening to a sermon from Davenport on the leading up of Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. A few days later, "after fasting and prayer," they formed their political association by what they called a "plantation covenant," "to distinguish it from a church cov- Plantation enant, which could not at that time be made, a covenant. church not being then gathered." In this compact they resolved, "that, as in matters that concern the gathering and ordering of a church, so likewise in all public offices which concern civil order, as choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing of laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature," they would "be ordered by the rules which the Scriptures hold 1 In their letter, however, to the magistrates (Winthrop, I. 484), who had strongly urged them to remain in the neighborhood of Boston, they put their decision on the ground of want of satisfactory accommodation there. Winthrop says (Ibid., 259) that an opinion of " more safety from danger of a General Governor, who was feared to be sent this summer," had its influence in swelling the number of the party. Winthrop, however, hoped that the dispersion would be useful "for diverting the thoughts and intentions of such in England as intended evil against us, whose designs might be frustrated by our scattering so far; and such as were now gone that way were as much in the eye of the state of England as we here." (Ibid., 260.) Eaton had been to view Quinnipiack, with others, the second month after his arrival (Ibid., 237), and appears to have left a small party to winter, perhaps for a trial of the climate. Stoughton had become acquainted with Quinnipiack in the Pequot campaign (Letter of Stoughton, in Winthrop, I. 478, comp. Mass. Hist. Coll., XXVI. 13), and his favorable representations to the Governor probably directed the attention of Eaton's party to the place. forth." It had no external sanction, and comprehended no acknowledgment of the government of England. The company consisted mostly of Londoners, who at home had been engaged in trade. In proportion to their number, they were the richest of all the plantations. Like the settlers on Narragansett Bay, they had no other title to their lands than that which they obtained by purchase from the Indians.2 Nov 24. With a wiser judgment of the safe way of proceeding in such affairs than Gorges exercised when he planned a government beforehand for his province, or Locke when he made a constitution for those who might people South Carolina, the settlers at Quinnipiack gave themselves a year to learn from experience the arrangements suitable to a social organization for persons so circumstanced. They were "cast into several private meetings, wherein they that dwelt nearest together gave their accounts one to another of God's gracious work upon them, and prayed together and conferred to their mutual edification.” 3 By this intercourse they matured a unity of sentiment, and became prepared for the selection of those whom they were to intrust with office. 3 In early summer, " all the free planters" met in a barn, "to consult about settling civil government according to God." Mr. Davenport prayed, and preached from June 4. the text, "Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn out her seven pillars." He proved in his 1639. 1 New Haven Col. Rec., 12. 2 Trumbull supposed otherwise. He says (History, Chap. VII.): "The colonists, both in Connecticut and New Haven, were the patentees of Lord Say and Sele, Lord Brooke, and the other gentlemen interested in the old Connecticut patent." But I presume he was in this instance, as he very rarely was, in error. I can find nothing to authorize his statement. "New Haven's Case Stated" (which see in Bacon, 4 Thirteen Historical Discourses, 359- Organization discourse the fitness of designating seven competent men to construct the government which was contemplated. After a solemn exhortation to his hearers to act deliberately and conscientiously on the great mat- of a governters before them, he proposed four fundamental articles for their adoption. They were as follows: ment. 1. That "the Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to perform to God and men, as well in the government of families and commonwealths as in matters of the church." 2. 66 That, as in matters that concern the gathering and ordering of a church, so likewise in all public offices which concern civil order, as choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing of laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature, they would all of them be ordered by those rules which the Scripture holds forth." 3. That they were "settled in the plantation with a purpose, resolution, and desire, that they might be admitted into church fellowship according to Christ, as soon as God should fit them thereunto." 4. That "they held themselves bound to establish such civil order as might best conduce to the securing of the purity and peace of the ordinances to themselves and their posterity according to God." These articles having been discussed, and accepted by unanimous votes, Mr. Davenport proposed, and the company adopted, two others, designed to reduce the theory to practice. They were, 5. "That church members only should be free burgesses, and that they only should choose magistrates and officers among themselves, to have the power of transacting all the public civil affairs of the Plantation, of making and repealing laws, dividing of inheritances, deciding of differences that might arise, and doing all things or businesses of like nature." |