plantations might be obliged to present the names of their Governors to his Majesty for his approbation."

New Hampshire was a royal Province, having the first branch of its Legislature, as well as its executive officers, appointed by the King, and subject to have its government remodelled by him at any time. In Massachusetts the chief executive officers were appointed by the crown, but the Council was elective, subject to the Governor's refusal. Neither Rhode Island nor Connecticut had any such close dependence upon the government at home, and those Colonies accordingly conducted their affairs with less apprehension of interference. In the woful decade in King William's reign, their people, enclosed within other English settlements where they did not border on the sea, were spared most of the calamities experienced by their neighbors of the two other Provinces. Connecticut, however, was active and generous in supporting the Her share common cause. When, in the summer after the in the war. Revolution, she received an application from Governor Bradstreet to take part in the war with the In- 1689. dians at the East, though devastated at the time July. by an epidemic sickness, she immediately sent some of her considerable men to Boston, to consult on the exigency with commissioners from the other Colonies; and on their report that the war was, " on the part of the English, a defensive war, and just and lawful," two hundred of the militia of Connecticut were immediately sent into the field. When the light-headed Jacob Leisler attempted to imitate in New York the revolution conducted by the Massachusetts patriots, Connecticut, wishing well to his cause, sent him a few men to hold his fort in the town of New York, and keep the uneasy people there in order, and a company to help guard the western frontier of his Province against the French February.

1 Journal of the Board of Trade, sub die.

July.

1690.

2 Conn. Col. Rec., IV. 1, note.

Ibid., 2, 3, 4.

1690.

April 11.

1697. May.

and their savage allies.' From the latter force, under the command of Captain Bull, a party was posted at Feb. 8. Schenectady, at the time of the calamitous assault on that place, and lost five men killed and five captured.* A reinforcement of two hundred Connecticut soldiers was then marched to Albany; and on applications from Massachusetts, other troops were despatched to the seat of war in the Eastern country, and three times at least to secure the upper towns on the Connecticut River. Contributions were made in the churches of Connecticut to relieve the sufferers from the Indian ravages in New Hampshire and Maine. On an alarm of a landing of the French in Narragansett Bay, troops were moved eastward, and works were erected at Saybrook and New London.5 These operations were costly; and the share of Connecticut in the expense of the ten years' war, to which she was not prominently a party, is believed to have exceeded the sum of twelve thousand pounds."

1692.

1691.

May.

1693.

May.

Her defeated expedi

The most important of her military movements during this period belonged to the expedition against Canada in the year after that of the Revolution. It has been related that the plan of the campaign was for a force to be operating against Montreal at the time when the ships under Phips's command should appear before Quebec, and that the miscarriage of the former part of this scheme caused the discomfiture of the latter. The plan of the expedition had been digested at a meeting held at New York, by commissioners from that Colony and the Colonies of New Eng

tion to Montreal.

1690. May.

1 Conn. Col. Rec., III. 255, IV. 15, 16; comp. O'Callaghan, III. 589; Documentary History of New York, II. 20, 43 et seq.

Conn. Col. Rec., III. 463, note. 8 Ibid., IV. 47, 67, 89, 149, 204, 205. Ibid., IV. 193.

• Trumbull, History, I. 387; Conn.

Col. Rec., IV. 48, 97. For an account of a spirited movement in February, 1700 (see above, p. 186), when there was an alarm of discontent among the Indians, see Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc. for 1867, 473 et seq.

Trumbull, History, I. 397.

August.

land. The land force was to consist of eight hundred Englishmen, with eighteen hundred Indians of the Five Nations. Fitz-John Winthrop of Connecticut was to have the chief command, and the Colony of New York was to take care for the supply of provisions. The place of rendezvous for the English and Indians was an inlet called Wood Creek, at the southern end of Lake Champlain. When the English arrived, they found only some seventy Indian allies; and a messenger sent to look for the missing warriors returned without satisfactory intelligence. What was much worse, the boats which the Indians had been relied upon to furnish for the passage of the lake had not been collected, and the provisions which it had been the business of Milborn, the New York commissary, to supply, were found to be inadequate to subsist the army while on its way towards the French plantations.1

2

In these circumstances, whatever might have been done by officers of more enterprise and more resource, nothing seemed possible to Winthrop and his council of war but a precipitate retreat. Their resolution to this effect enraged Milborn and Leisler, on whom it threw an odious responsibility. It is related that the latter, in virtue of his assumed authority as Governor of New York, went so far as to arrest Winthrop, and to keep him some days under guard, with the purpose of bringing him before a court-martial; and that when his Domestic," was attempted thus early, but failed after the publication of two or three monthly numbers. (Hist. Mag., I. 229.) Comp. the circumstantial account of those transactions in Shea's translation of Charlevoix, II. 146, note.

1 Winthrop's Journal of his "march from Albany to Wood Creek" is in O'Callaghan, IV. 193 et seq. He had found "no possibility of getting provisions to support the forces any longer, and that here was not canoes to transport half the Christians." (Comp. letter of Milborn to Winthrop, in Mass. Hist. Col., XLI. 439.) The disappointing news, as it first came to Boston, was published, Sept. 25, 1690, in a newspaper, which, under the title of "Public Occurrences, both Foreign and

3

2 Leisler and his Council at New York presented their case to Lord Shrewsbury in a letter dated Oct. 20. 1690, for which see O'Callaghan, III. 751.

I say "it is related," as it is on the excellent authority of Trumbull

trial was about to come on he was rescued by some Mohawks," to the universal joy of the army.' It is certain that the magistrates of Connecticut had what they esteemed credible information of Winthrop's being confined by Leisler at Albany, and that they sent to that headstrong person a peremptory demand for the release of their officer. On an examination of the case, the colonial Assembly vindicated Winthrop's course, and commissioned two of the Magistrates to "thank the general for his good services to their Majesties and to this Colony, and to assure him that, on all seasonable occasions, they would be ready to manifest their good sentiments of his fidelity, valor, and prudence." 3

Oct. 9.

Her resist

The home government was too busy elsewhere to bestow much attention on the affairs of Connecticut, unless ance to judi- some special occurrence called for its notice. An cial appeals. occasion arose for it to declare its judgment on the right to entertain appeals from the colonial courts. On a representation from the Board of Trade that the courts of Connecticut had refused to allow an appeal to March 9. England, the Privy Council had made an order "that it is the inherent right of his Majesty to receive and determine appeals from all his Majesty's Colonies in America." A suitor in the Court of Assistants of Connecticut

1699.

4

(Hist., I. 384). But there are parts of the story that especially perplex me. I cannot understand how Leisler, inconsiderate as he was, could have supposed himself entitled to assume such a power; nor how, if he did, Winthrop should have allowed himself to be rescued by an Indian rabble; nor how any number of Mohawks should have got up their courage to the point of taking a prisoner out of the hands of a European guard who were on the look-out for them; nor how Connecticut troops should have been willing to leave to such agents to do for their commander what it was to their "universal joy"

1700. Dec. 5.

claimed this privilege, and was denied. He petitioned the Privy Council, who referred his case to the Board of Trade.1 The Privy Council finally directed that the appeal should be heard; but the order was not obeyed, and forty years passed before the question was disposed of. Then the claim of the Colony was allowed.2

1702.

Feb. 12.

1693.

A question arose respecting the chartered right of Connecticut to dispose of her military force.3 Successive instructions given to Phips, Governor of Massachusetts, and to Fletcher, Governor of New York, authorized them to command the Connecticut militia. Phips Feb. 23. was not disposed to assert the authority, and it was before long withdrawn; Fletcher was less forbearing. Command The Magistrates sent one of their number to New of her York, to engage him to suspend his claim till they should have had a hearing in England; but he refused to delay, and, coming to Hartford while the Assembly Oct. 26. was in session, demanded an acquiescence in his pretension, at the same time promising to place the troops under the immediate command of the Governor as his

1 Privy Council Register, sub die. 2 In full view of the possible consequences of their decision, the colonial court unhesitatingly affirmed the supremacy of colonial law, and denied to the statutes or common law of England any force except such as was given them by the explicit action of the General Assembly. From this decision they never deviated in any of the numerous cases in which the same issue was subsequently presented for adjudication. And it happens, curiously enough, that not a single appeal taken from the Connecticut courts to the King in Council was ultimately successful, however great the discrepancy between the Act of Assembly under which judgment had

militia.

been rendered and the laws of England. Once only in such case a law of the Colony was declared null and void. It cost the Colony some thousands of pounds and some twenty years of unremitted effort to procure a reversal of this decision, and place the annulled law again upon the statute-book; but the work was accomplished, and the legal advisers of the crown concurred in approving the restoration." (Letter of J. H. Trumbull to the author; see below, p. 578.)

3 Conn. Col. Rec., IV. 77, 102.

4 R. I. Rec., III. 296; Privy Council Register for Feb. 23, 1693. For Fletcher's commission, see O'Calla ghan, III. 827.

5 Conn. Col. Rec., IV. 105.