July 20. warmly supported by the Board of Trade. The issue of this measure, and of others connected with it, has been already related. The last communica tions between New Hampshire and the Governor were not friendly. The Province was exultant, and the Governor was disappointed and embittered.1 1741. Governor Connecticut. In the year in which Belcher was dismissed from the governments of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Joseph Talcott, of Hartford, died, having been Governor of Connecticut for seventeen successive years from the death of Governor Saltonstall. During the period of Talcott's administration the chief thing to be noticed in the history of the Colony is its rapid growth, marked by the establishment of new towns. Willington, destined within the century to become noteworthy as the birthplace of one of the most eminent of American scholars, began with twentyseven inhabitants. The settlements in quick succession of Somers, New Fairfield, East Haddam, Union, Barkhamstead, Colebrook, Hartland, Winchester, New Hartford, Torrington, Kent, Goshen, Canaan, Salisbury, and Cornwall prove the thriving condition of the community which they enlarged. Yet these territorial arrangements were not always amicably effected. In Governor Andros's time a large tract 1728. 1730. 1732. 1733. 1734. 1737. 1738. 1739. successor, and an Act was passed, providing that for "this special occasion, . . . . . and to no other purpose or intent whatsoever," the two Houses should act as one body. The Convention chose Joseph Talcott to be Governor, and Jonathan Law, of Milford, to be Lieutenant-Governor, "to continue in that office till the annual election in May" (Conn. Col. Rec., VI. 432-435), at which time the election of both was renewed by the popular vote. (Ibid., 514, 515.) about Litchfield had been improvidently granted by the General Assembly to the towns of Hartford and 1687. Windsor. When these towns proceeded to make Jan. 26. a sale of it, the Legislature interfered, probably on the ground that the grant had by both parties been understood at the time to be merely a device for keeping the lands out of the hands of the rapacious Governor, and not as an actual transfer of the property. The towns sold the land, however, and the purchasers proceeded to survey and occupy it. It was a common interest that the settlements should be extended, and that a dispute, in which not a few persons of consequence had become interested, should be put to rest. The government entertained dispassionately the claim which had been set up, and finding it to 1726. be not without plausibility and to be enforced by May 26. independent considerations of public advantage, consented to generous terms of accommodation.1 1727. An order from the Privy Council and the Lords of Trade to proclaim King George the Second Sept. 18. called forth warm expressions of loyalty from the Legislature, which Governor Talcott had summoned to hold a special session.2 An Address of congratulation was sent to the King, and at the same time the Appeal to Governor was charged to transmit to the agent connecticut of the Colony in England a reply to a complaint laws of which John Winthrop, nephew of the late Governor, was understood to be urging there. Winthrop, 1 Conn. Col. Rec., VII. 43, 44. 2 Ibid., 120, 121.- Oct. 12, 1727, the Assembly ordered that the ceremonies which had taken place at Hartford in honor of the King's accession should be repeated at New Haven (Conn. Col. Rec., VII. 124); that the troops in the county of New Haven, five of the eldest foot companies in the town of New Haven, and two foot companies in Milford, attend that day's service; that a treat the King against the inheritance. considering himself to be unjustly treated by the colonial courts in respect to the division of his father's estate, had gone to England to prosecute an appeal, and especially to represent that the colonial law which allowed daughters to receive real estate in the distribution of the property of an intestate person was in violation of the law of England.1 The question was of the first importance, since, if decided adversely to the Colony, it would unsettle titles to landed property which had stood from the very beginning. As yet the King's Privy Council had shown itself inclined to decide that the law of Connecticut on this subject must be disallowed, and was null. The agent was now furnished with a hundred pounds sterling, "to be improved for the use of the government in making our defence against the aforesaid complaint of Mr. Winthrop." Winthrop's wife produced to the Governor a record of Oct. 10. an Order of the King in Council, overruling that action of the Connecticut courts of which Winthrop had complained; and the Assembly ordered the Secretary to proceed to put Winthrop in possession of the land claimed by him, as soon as "the bounds and quantity of said land" should be ascertained. The situation was most inconvenient. No settlement of intestate estates could be made in the Colony with confidence that it gave a valid title. Connecticut could not be brought to accede to the determination of the Privy Council. And at length, nearly twenty 1745. years after the adverse decree of that body, the provincial law was sanctioned by a decision of the Council, under the advice of the crown lawyers.3 1728. July. 1 Winthrop had conducted himself towards the Governor "insolently, contemptuously, and disorderly," declaring himself to "stand upon a par with the whole Assembly." The Assembly hereupon committed him "to the custody of the sheriff." He escaped the same night (May, 1726), and the Assembly punished him by a fine of twenty pounds. * The case of Clark versus Tousey, brought before the Privy Council four years earlier, involved the question so long pending. The Assembly advanced to Tousey five hundred pounds towards the payment of his expenses, The Assembly, which received the unwelcome intelligence of the action of the Privy Council on the law of inheritance, applied to Jonathan Belcher to go to England and associate himself in the agency for the Colony with Dummer, who was understood to be ill in health.1 He went accordingly, and reached England at the time when the dispute of Governor Burnet with Massachusetts had increased the displeasure in the courtly circles against the Colonies. The accounts which he sent home were such as to occasion the government of Connecticut to write to him in alarm: "We are unwilling to surrender our charter, for we account it the choicest Alarm for part of our inheritance, and shall not, upon any terms, be persuaded to part with the same. you will avoid all occasion of hazarding of it. Particularly we are greatly concerned respecting the conduct of the Assembly of the Massachusetts, fearing it will have an ill influence upon our affairs if that should be brought into Parliament." And the agents were instructed "to use the "considering that almost all the inheritances in this Colony are depending upon the settlement of intestate estates according to our ancient laws and customs, which, if they should be overruled and made void, would reduce the inhabitants to the utmost ruin and confusion." (Conn. Col. Rec., VIII. 463; comp. 506.) In October, 1730, Governor Talcott wrote to Wilks, the new agent for the Colony in London, that no intestate estate had been settled since the Privy Council's order of February, 1728. In one of the earliest Acts passed under her provincial charter (Mass. Province Laws, I. 43), Massachusetts had made like provision to that of Connecticut for the Settling and Distribution of the Estates of Intestates," and the law was allowed by the King's Privy Council. In 1733, an estate in Massachusetts was divided 66 1729. Oct 9. the charter. Therefore agreeably to this law by the local authorities. A brother of the deceased intestate appealed against the decision, on the ground that the distribution which had been ordered of real estate was contrary to the laws of England," and had been so pronounced by the Privy Council in 1728, after a hearing of the same question in the case of the Connecticut law. The Privy Council dismissed the appeal (Jan. 13 and 16, 1738), the decisive consideration being that the charter of Massachusetts required that her statutes should from time to time be submitted to the Privy Council, and approved by them, as had been done in this case; while in the case of the Connecticut legislation no such consent had been given. (Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc. for 1860, 61–80, 165–171.) 1 Conn. Col. Rec., VII. 185. utmost caution that we be not in the least measure involved with the Massachusetts when that matter comes into the Parliament." When Belcher came home as Governor of his native Colony, Francis Wilks, of London, was appointed agent for Connecticut.1 1730. Oct. 8. Yale Oct. 8. 1735. Oct. 8. 1741. Oct. 8. 1740. The Colony continued to be generous to Yale College. The accustomed annual gift of a hundred pounds to that institution was first doubled, then tripled, and then still further increased; and three hundred and ten pounds in bills of credit were voted to the church in Windham, as "satisMay 8. faction for their temporal damages in giving up Mr. Thomas Clap to be Rector." Time, experience, and good sense had moderated religious jealousies, and May 8. "such dissenters as are commonly called Quakers," Oct. 9. and immediately afterwards Baptists, were exempted by law from paying taxes for the support of Congregational worship, on furnishing proof that they attended a worship of their own. The Pequod Indians complained of intruders from the town of Groton on their woods May 13. and lands, and two magistrates were appointed "to 1729. 1731. 1 Dummer recovered his health, and in July, 1728, Belcher's appointment was withdrawn (Conn. Col. Rec., VII. 191), as was Dummer's the next year. The Assembly, "having been informed that Jeremiah Dummer . . . . . hath left the court of Great Britain, and liveth in the country, and therefore not like to be serviceable to the Colony as formerly," directed the Governor "to signify to said Dummer that this Assembly are otherwise provided with an agent, and therefore have no occasion to trouble Mr. Dummer any further in our affairs." (Ibid.,,307.) -There was always a certain distrust of Dummer's sincerity, high as was the estimate justly set on his abilities. Judge Sewall records an instance of his double dealing. In his Diary for Oct. 6, 1716, the Judge enters a paper given him, he says, by Dummer, in 1711, in which Dummer expresses the wish for "Roxbury [Dudley] to be informed that he is his friend, though he must not appear for him, but rather against him." When Belcher came to Massachusetts as Governor, Roger Wolcott and James Wadsworth were sent from Connecticut to congratulate him, and to inquire of him respecting the position of the affairs of Connecticut at court. (Ibid., 282.) * Ibid., 325; comp. above, p. 479. |