The copy of these laws herewith presented, was originally taken from the public records which are preserved in the office of the Secretary of the State of Connecticut. The judicial proceedings which form a portion of the volume were also transcribed from the manuscript records of the court to which they appertain. The first edition of the work having long been out of print, a new impression was deemed desirable to meet the frequent calls which were made for it. The antique and obsolete orthography of this remarkable relic of the colonial era of our country has been carefully retained, as forming an essential element of its singularity and value. S. M. S.

PHILADELPHIA, October 1860.

INTRODUCTION.

MEMORIALS of former ages possess an attraction for the majority of readers; but monuments of the peculiar qualities of that stern and vigorous race of men, who have stamped the impress of their genius on society, literature, and government in almost every quarter of the civilized world, during several centuries, are invested with a superior and more absorbing interest. The Puritans and their peculiarities of manner, speech, attire, and belief have often been the subject of ridicule to the dri. veler, of abhorrence to the sensualist, of condemnation to the bigot; nevertheless, they have constituted one of the chief motive-powers which has urged on the car of human progress; they have proved to be the most potent bulwarks in defense of liberty; they have formed one of the chief sanctuaries in which virtue, love of truth, hatred to tyrants, and the best interests of mankind, have been protected and enshrined. Wherever the Anglo-Saxon race exists, moulding the laws, religion, and social condition of communities and nations, there the traditions of the quaint peculiarities and austere virtues of the Puritans will be found, as

serting their power as facile principes among the controlling influences which give character to the institutions around them. Hence it is, that the singular collection of judicial enactments and decisions familiarly known as the "Blue Laws of Connecticut," possess a serious importance, and not merely, as is sometimes erroneously supposed, a risible and comical interest.

We purpose, in this Introduction, to trace briefly the origin and development of those several communities in Connecticut who framed and administered these Laws; and to narrate the leading circumstances and events which attended their history, until the period when these regulation were adopted by them and were incorporated into their civil and ecclesiastical government.

I. ORIGIN OF THE COLONY OF CONNECTICUT.

On the 20th of March, 1630, about ten years after the landing of the pilgrim fathers on Plymouth Rock, a number of persons who professed the same religious opinions sailed from Plymouth, England; and after a voyage of two months arrived off Nantasket Point. They proceeded up Charles river, and having landed, commenced the erection of dwellings, at a place subsequently called Dorchester. These emigrants were under the guidance of the Rev. John Warham, who had been a distinguished Puritan minister in Devonshire, England. In 1632 a second emigration took place under the conduct of the Rev. Thomas

Hooker, who settled at Newtown. A third community was also established at Watertown, under the general direction of the Rev. Mr. Phillips. These three communities were situated within the limits of the old colony of Massachusetts.

In 1634 the accession of numbers from the mother country to the Puritan colonies of the New World, in consequence of the ecclesiastical tyranny which prevailed in England, became so great, that the settlers we have just named conceived the idea, that their interests would be promoted by a removal from Massachusetts to a still newer and less populous location; and various reports having been circulated in reference to the fertility and salubrity of the region known by the name Connecticut, a number of persons resolved to remove thither, and there establish a new colony. They petitioned the Court of the elder colony for permission to withdraw; and after considerable opposition their request was granted. It was in the year 1635 that their resolution was carried into effect. First a number of persons from Watertown, plunging into the primeval wilderness of forest which divided the inhabited portions of Massachusetts from the surrounding territory, traveled toward the Connecticut river; and at length halted, erected a few huts, and commenced a settlement at Weatherfield. Other companies from Newtown and Dorchester followed, and by them the villages of Hartford and Windsor were subsequently commenced. Thus were laid the foundations of the colony of Con

necticut, by persons who had fled, in the first instance from ecclesiastical tyranny in England, in order that, amid the wilds and solitudes of a new world, they might enjoy the priceless boon of religious liberty. Prominent among these fathers of Connecticut were Messrs. Warham, Hooker, Ludlow Wolcott, and Hopkins, all of whom were either the ministers or magistrates of the three first settlements. These men and their associates deserve the praise of having nurtured and moulded one of the most prosperous and virtuous communities which probably ever existed; and which, till this day, maintains a marked preeminence among men for all those qualities which indicate social, moral, and political excellence.

In the year 1636 the three towns of Hartford, Weatherfield, and Windsor contained about eight hundred persons; including the garrison of the fort, which had been erected at the mouth of the Connecticut river, commanded by Lieutenant Gardiner, as a protection against the occasional aggressions of the Dutch, in the neighboring colony of New Amsterdam.

These colonists settled under the auspices of a charter which had been executed in 1631, by Robert, Earl of Warwick, president of the Council of Plymouth, to William, Viscount Say and Seal, Robert Lord Brooks, Lord Rich and others, their heirs and assigns forever; which charter conveyed to them the fee simple of all that portion of New England, which extended from the Narragansett