August. dam1 for that country, whence he had been absent during the whole of the last eighteen eventful years. John WinHe was a man to make and keep friends; and, throp, jr. both from his old friends and from others, he in England. had a flattering reception. From good-will to him, as well as to the community which he represented, the aged Lord Say and Sele, with whose business in America he had been formerly intrusted, embraced his cause with a cordial interest. Winthrop's mind was inquisitive in a variety of ways, and he had made some attainments in physical science. A similarity of tastes introduced him to the useful acquaintance of men enjoying favor with a prince whose only claim to grateful remembrance consists in his having founded the Royal Society. That Society was forming just at the time of Winthrop's arrival in England, with Robert Boyle for its President, with whom, as President of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, he had already had official relations. The result of his negotiation was, that, at the end of a 1 N. H. Rec., 457, note. See Vol. I. 450. * See his Lordship's letter in Trumbull, I. 515. It has been inferred from some language in Mortimer's Dedication of the fortieth volume of the Royal Society's Transactions, that Winthrop was one of the original associates. But such was not the fact. See a list of them in the Charter (which passed the seals, July 15, 1663) in Weld's excellent History of the Royal Society, II. 484, 497. Sir Kenelm Digby, who was active in its formation, was afterwards a copious correspondent of Winthrop; and some of his letters which are preserved (Mass. Hist. Coll., XXX. 5, 15) go to confirm Evelyn's opinion (Memoirs, &c., I. 257): "The truth is, Sir Kenelm was an errant mountebank." However, he was a benefactor to our In the Royal Society's Archives Colonial charter. 1662. May 10. few months, he had obtained for his Colony a royal charter conveying the most extraordinary privileges. Nineteen patentees, with such associates as they should from time to time elect, were constituted a corporation under the name of "The Governor and Company of the English Colony of Connecticut in New England in America." The territory granted to them was "bounded on the east by the Narrogancett River, commonly called Narrogancett Bay where the said river falleth into the sea; and on the north, by the line of the Massachusetts plantations; and on the south, by the sea; and, in longitude, as the line of the Massachusetts Colony runneth from east to west, that is to say, from the said Narrogancett Bay on the east, to the South Sea [the Pacific Ocean] on the west part, with the islands. thereunto adjoining." Thus it embraced the whole of New-Haven Colony; part of the lands claimed respectively by the planters of Providence and Rhode Island, and by the Dutch; and that territory east of Pequot River to which Massachusetts had asserted a title. The Colonial government was vested in a Governor, DeputyGovernor, twelve Assistants, and a House of Deputies, to be constituted of two members from each town or city. These officers were to be elected annually by the freemen of the Colony; and the legislature was to hold semi The patentees were mostly the persons named in a list which accompanied Winthrop's instructions. The names of William Phelps, Robert Warner, Robert Royce, Philip Groves, and Jehu Burr, inserted in that list, were left out from the patent; and those of John Tapping, Richard Lord, Henry Wolcott, John Ogden, Thomas Wells, and Obadiah Bruen were added. The names presented in the Instructions were those of the Magistrates (except the Magistrates from Long Island, omitted, perhaps, with reference to the claim of the Earl of Stirling), and of one out of each pair of Deputies by which the towns were severally represented in the General Court when the Address was adopted. Tapping and Ogden, who were made patentees, were of Southampton (Long Island). Phelps, one of the persons omitted from the patent, though named in the Instructions, was left out of the magistracy in the first election under the patent, and was succeeded by Henry Wolcott, who had also been substituted for him as a patentee. annual meetings. The charter contained no reservation as to any of the powers appurtenant to a political community strictly independent, except that the local legislature could make no laws "contrary to the laws and statutes of the realm of England;" -a provision which had little practical significance, inasmuch as no obligation was imposed as to annulling laws objectionable in this respect, or transmitting laws to England for examination. It was not even enjoined that the oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy should be taken in the Colony, though two Assistants were to be empowered to administer them.1 Winthrop was backed by powerful friends. He possessed singular qualifications for the business with which he was charged; and he applied himself to it with zealous diligence. With the pliancy which made part of his graceful character, he overcame the disgust that must have possessed him in approaching those whose savage revenge had just brought sorrow into his own home, and, remembering only that he was the Governor and the envoy of Connecticut, solicited personal good-will in every quarter where it might serve her interests. These facts, his brother Stephen, was the person to whom a letter was addressed (April 6 or 8, 1660) by the hand of Charles the Second, just before his restoration, thanking him for "many good offices" in promoting that event. The letter, which has been transmitted in the family of Winthrop, is without a direction; and its history is lost. I think there can be little doubt, that it came into their possession merely as a curious autograph, having been addressed to some one of the numerous partisans and agents of the exiled prince in England. Stephen Winthrop, who, in the Protector's time, had commanded a regiment, and served in Parliament, had died a year before the date of this however, afford but an insufficient explanation of the extraordinary result of his endeavors. We are still left to inquire how it could be that a wary and arbitrary minister, who, in the new zeal of office, was gathering into his master's hands all power that could be seized, was brought to make a formal grant of what almost amounted to colonial independence. It must have been obvious to Lord Clarendon, that, in the prosecution of his schemes of encroachment upon New England, the Confederacy was the power by which he was to be embarrassed. It followed, that to disturb the arrangements of that league, and sow dissension among its members, was a method altogether to his purpose. Massachusetts was by far the most powerful of the confederated Colonies, and was likely to be found the most refractory. A ready way to disable her was to raise up a rival power, and provide occasions of jealousy between them; and, to effect this, the natural course was to enlarge Connecticut, between which Colony and Massachusetts there had hitherto been differences, and to create that enlargement by methods which Massachusetts would have to disapprove. Thus favored on the one hand, and obstructed on the other, Connecticut would be likely to be secured to the royal interest. letter; and John Winthrop (not to refer to other reasons putting him out of the question) was then beyond the sea, in Connecticut. (See Savage's Winthrop, I. 126.) In Thurloe's State Papers (I. 763; comp. Mass. Hist. Coll., XXI. 185) is a letter of John Maidston, which awakens the reader's curiosity. It was written in London, in March, 1660, to Winthrop, then in Connecticut. It covers in print five large folio pages, and gives an account of the movements of the popular party in England, from the time of the first session of the Long The incor Parliament to the beginning of the year of the Restoration. It is in reply to a letter from Winthrop; and its tenor is such as to suggest the possi bility that Winthrop had had some misgivings about the correctness of the past course of the patriot party, or, at least, had felt himself not to be suf ficiently possessed of their case to be a confident champion of it, and had applied to his friend (whose letter shows him to have been a man of superior sense and knowledge) for the benefit of his information and judgment. poration of New Haven into that Colony, by which the requisite enlargement would be obtained, would be attended with other results satisfactory to the watchful minister. By the union, New Haven, which, like Massachusetts, attached the civil franchise to church-membership, would be deprived of that defence against the encroachments of prelacy. New Haven had given grievous displeasure at court by sheltering the regicides. The disappointment, the humiliation, the disadvantages and losses, whatever they might be, of being struck out of existence as a separate community, might well seem to such eyes a fitting punishment. Whether it was that Winthrop easily consented, or that Lord Clarendon absolutely insisted, the charter offered no choice to New Haven respecting the termination of its political life. Winthrop represented Connecticut, and was zealous for its interests. Having begun his public career as the agent of its patentees, he may still have regarded the New-Haven people as a sort of trespassers upon their land.1 And, at a time when Connecticut and New Haven were at issue respecting the exclusive policy which connected the franchise with church-membership,2 1 Connecticut now claimed to be, by virtue of the arrangement with Fenwick, the proprietor of the lands which had been conveyed by patent to Lord Brooke, Lord Say and Sele, and their associates; and it was a portion of those lands that the New-Haven people had occupied. The year before Winthrop went to England, a measure adopted by the town of New Haven to extend its border to the east, gave occasion to Connecticut to revive her claim with some formality. The Secretary of the latter Colony wrote to the New-Haven Magistrates, expressing the dissatisfaction of his government, and proceeding so far as to say: "We conceive you cannot be ignorant of our real and true right to those parts of the country where you are |