first example in history of a written constitution, — a distinct organic law, constituting a government, and defining its powers." Containing no recognition whatever of any external authority on either side of the ocean, it provided, that all persons should be freemen who should be admitted as such by the freemen of the towns, and take an oath of allegiance to the commonwealth; - that there should be two general meetings of the freemen in a year, at one of which, to be holden in April, should be elected by ballot a Governor (who must be a member of some church), and as many magistrates (not, however, fewer than six), and other public officers, as should be found requisite"; — that at the same times there should be meetings of Deputies, four to be sent from each of the existing towns, and as many as the General Court should determine from towns subsequently constituted;-and that the General Court, consisting of the Governor and at least four magistrates and a majority of the Deputies, should have power to make laws for the whole jurisdiction, "to grant levies, to admit freemen, dispose of lands undisposed of to several towns or persons, to call either court or magistrate or any other person whatsoever into question for any misdemeanor," and to "deal in any other matter that concerned the good of the commonwealth, except election of magistrates," which was to "be done by the whole body of freemen." The Governor was not re-eligible till a year after the expiration of his term of office. In the absence of special laws, "the rule of the word of God" was to be followed.2 Neither the oaths of

1 Bacon, Early Constitutional His- Colony of Connecticut," for an abstract tory of Connecticut, 5, 6. of a sermon deciphered by him from a manuscript in short-hand, preserved in the Library of the Hartford Historical Society. This sermon, preached by Mr. Hooker to the General Court in May, 1638, may probably have been intended to prepare the people for the great step which was soon after taken. Its

2 Conn. Col. Rec., 20-25. The instrument, drawn with great care and knowledge, seems to bear marks of the statesmanlike mind of Haynes, and the lawyerlike mind of Ludlow. I am indebted to my learned friend, Mr. J. H. Trumbull, editor of the "Records of the

officers nor of freemen promised any allegiance except to "the jurisdiction." The whole constitution was that of an independent state. It continued in force, with very little alteration, a hundred and eighty years, securing, throughout that period, a degree of social order and happiness such as is rarely the fruit of civil institutions.

Election of

April 11.

At the first election, Haynes, formerly Governor of Massachusetts, was chosen Governor. Roger Ludlow, of Windsor, formerly Deputy-Governor of Massachusetts, and Edward Hopkins, formerly an magistrates. opulent merchant of London, were two of the six Assistants, Ludlow having precedence as DeputyGovernor. William Phelps, another Assistant, had, as well as Ludlow, been one of the Commissioners of Massachusetts for the management of the Connecticut towns in the year of their settlement.

The government having been thus organized, the administration proceeded in substantially the same manner as in the earlier governments of Massachusetts Early and Plymouth, except that in Connecticut the legislation. Court of Magistrates confined itself more to judicial business. In the first year a general law was passed, of an elaborate character, for the incorporation of towns, on the model of those in Massachusetts, each with a government, for municipal affairs, of "three, five, or seven of their chief inhabitants," chosen annually by themselves. A public registry was established in each town for conveyances of real estate, with the provision,

doctrines (drawn from Deut. i. 13) are the following:-"1. The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people, by God's own allowance. 2. The privilege of election which belongs to the people must not be exercised according to their humors, but according to the blessed will and law of God. 3. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their

Oct. 10.

power also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them."

1 Conn. Col. Rec., 25, 26, 54.

2 He was the husband of Theophilus Eaton's stepdaughter (Kingsley, Historical Discourse, &c., 76), and had come to Boston in 1637, in the same vessel with Eaton (see above, p. 528) and Lord Leigh (see above, p. 482).

that “all bargains or mortgages of land whatsoever should be accounted of no value until they were recorded." "For the better keeping in mind of those passages of God's Providence which had been remarkable since the first undertaking these plantations," six principal men were "desired to take the pains severally in their respective towns, and then jointly together, to gather up the same," to be recorded; and their office was made permanent "for future times," with provisions for such superintendence as might prevent errors from finding their way into history. But the plan does not appear to have been carried out.1 At the second election under the constitution, Edward Hopkins was chosen Governor, and John Haynes DeputyGovernor. Ludlow was made an Assistant, and the four other magistrates' of the last year were rechosen.

Connecticut had in the course of the year interposed itself, by two new plantations, between New Haven and the Dutch. Mr. Ludlow, with eight or ten families from Windsor, began a settlement at an inviting spot called by the Indians Uncoa, and by the English Fairfield, at the head of a small inlet from Long Island

Fairfield. Sound. They were joined by a party from

1640.

Watertown in Massachusetts, and before long by another from Concord; and after some questions, in which Mr. Ludlow did not escape censure, their Deputies June 11. were admitted to the General Court of Connecticut. East of Fairfield, between it and the Housatonic, and near the mouth of that river, a number of personsseveral recently arrived from England, several from Boston and other parts of Massachusetts, and a few from the Connecticut towns-collected on an expanse of meadowland, known then by the names of Cupheage and Pequannock, and since by that of Stratford. The General Court Stratford. recognized them by setting out their bounds and June 15. providing for the administration of justice within

1 Conn. Col. Rec., 35-40.

2 Ibid., 36.

them.1 They had bought their lands of the Indians, and pretended no other title.2

"4

George Fen

brook.

1639.

The post at the mouth of the Connecticut, which Gardiner had commanded in the Pequot war, had as yet, and for four or five years longer, no political connection with the upper towns. It was nothing but a fort, occupied by some twenty men, and surrounded by a few buildings and a little cultivated land, till George Fenwick, "and his lady and family, arrived to make wick at Saya plantation."3 Fenwick, "a worthy, pious gentleman, and of a good family and estate," had July. been a barrister of Gray's Inn. His wife was a daughter of Sir Edward Apsley. He was interested in the Connecticut patent, and to explore its territory had made a short visit to this country three years before. He now came as agent for the patentees, and, fixing on the site at the river's mouth as his residence, gave it the name of Saybrook, in honor of the two noblemen who were the most distinguished members of the company which he represented.

5

The reader has seen how the spirit of commercial enterprise, which in later times has so distinguished the inhabitants of Plymouth Colony, was early manifested in the establishment of distant trading-houses on the Penobscot and Kennebec to the northeast, and on the Plymouth Connecticut to the southwest.8 In both direc- factories. tions the adventures were attended with little profit and with no little annoyance. The seizure and robbery of

1 Conn. Col. Rec., 53.

2 Mr. Hopkins and Mr. Goodwin purchased from the Indians all the land between Milford and Hudson's River, John Higginson, of Hartford, acting as their interpreter. (Records of Stratford, as quoted by Goodwin, Genealogical Notes, &c., 2, note.)

3 Winthrop, I. 306. 4 Hutchinson, I. 97.

5 Winthrop, I. 469.

6 This lady was, I suppose, of the family of the wife of Colonel Hutchinson. (See above, p. 280, note 1.) Fenwick's second wife, espoused after his return to England, was a daughter of Sir Arthur Hazelrigg.

7 Winthrop, I. 470.

8 See above, pp. 230, 337, 340.

1632.

1635.

the Penobscot factory by a party of French, soon after its establishment, has already been related.1 An attempt at a re-establishment of it proved no more prosperous. On the strength of the cession to the French, by the treaty of St. Germains, of the territory of New France March 29. captured by the English three years before, Rasilli, the French commander at Cape Breton, claimed for his master the country as far to the southwest as Pemaquid. Charles d'Aulnay de Charnisé and Charles Étienne de la Tour were his subordinates in its government. The former was in charge of the division west of the St. Croix. He came by sea to the Plymouth August. house on the Penobscot, helped himself to the goods there deposited, with a promise of future payment at his own valuation, warned off the Plymouth traders as trespassers, and occupied their house for his own residence. The intelligence of this proceeding naturally occasioned great exasperation at Plymouth. The magistrates in vain solicited the government of MassaUnsuccessful chusetts for aid to recapture the post; the Bay exchequer was too empty. The most they could French. obtain was permission to engage at their own cost one Girling, master of a ship then lying at Boston, to undertake the conquest. The enterprise miscarried through his incompetency, which he refused to have supplied by the superior courage and conduct of Standish, who had been sent along with him. It had cost too much to be renewed, and the Penobscot remained in unfriendly hands.1

expedition

against the

3

In respect to the wrong which the Plymouth people conceived themselves to have suffered from the English planters on the Connecticut, their generosity did not limit itself to mere forbearance from retaliation.5 Three

1 See above, p. 337.

2 See above, p. 205.

3 Bradford, 332. Winthrop, I. 166.

4 Bradford, 333, 336; Winthrop, I. 168, 169.

5 See above, p. 452.