recommendation of the minister of a place where medical help was wanted. Of professional lawyers there is perhaps no trace to be found in the public record of those times, except in a statute which, along with rioters, scolds, keepers and frequenters of houses of ill-fame, night-walkers,

1698. drunkards, and such like evil-doers, proJanuary. vides that "common barrators, which frequently move, stir up, and maintain suits of law in court or quarrels and parts in the country," shall give security for their good behavior or by any Assistant be sent to the common gaol. 1700. Towns consisting of fewer than seventy October. families were obliged to keep up schools through half the year for the tuition of their children, "with able and sufficient schoolmasters "; towns of seventy families and upwards had to continue their school through the year; in the capital town of each of the four counties, a free "grammar school" with a public endowment of land was established, where young men might be prepared for college; and an Act was passed, 1701. which was to bear rich fruit, "for the foundOctober. ing and suitably endowing and ordering a collegiate school,. . . . . wherein youth may be instructed in the arts and sciences, who, through the blessing of Almighty God, may be fitted for public employments both in church and civil state."

.....

The inland boundaries of Connecticut on all sides remained undetermined. Massachusetts in

1642.

1693.

1695.

sisted on the correctness of her survey made by Woodward and Saffery in the early times, to ascertain the line of latitude, three miles south of the southernmost part of Charles River, which, according to her charter, made her southern boundary. Connecticut judged the surveyors to have erroneously marked that line of latitude by a line diverging from the true direction towards the south, when it came to reach her territory. Repeated proposals 1694. from her to unite in another survey were declined by the other party. It was urged 1700. by Connecticut that the new towns of Enfield and Suffield lay south of the legal border of Massachusetts and within her own. On the other part, the correctness of the ancient survey was insisted on, and it was further urged that, even if it should prove to be incorrect as to the disputed line of latitude, still it was understood to be correct at the time when King Charles gave Connecticut her charter, and must be considered as the line which was had in view when, in the charter, the northern boundary line of that colony was described as being coincident with the southern boundary line of Massachusetts. For the present, it was found impossible to effect an agreement on the subject. Nor for the present was there any better success in establishing the western boundary. The line on the New 1683. York side had, many years before, been Nov. 28. settled on paper, and King William's confirma

1700. tion of it, which it had been thought pruMarch 14. dent to solicit, was obtained. But the running of it and erecting monuments was still delayed.

The question of the eastern boundary of Connecticut, again revived, still seemed impossible to be disposed of, if it was to be discussed as a question of interpretation. Nothing could well be plainer than that two successive royal charters gave the country between Narragansett Bay and Pawtucket River, the first to one colony, the second to another. The decision of the commissioners who, towards the end of the reign of King Charles the Second, had reported adversely to the pretensions of Rhode Island, by reason of the. priority of the adverse title, had, it seems, not been acted upon by the Privy Council, and was not regarded as binding by that colony. The strife accordingly was renewed, and was prosecuted as formerly, sometimes by mutual violence, sometimes by ineffectual negotiation. The Board of Trade recommended a further attempt Aug. 26. at an amicable settlement, and directed Lord Bellomont to use his endeavors to promote it. He did so, but without avail, and nothing remained for him but to advise the parties to send their agents to England to present their case to the Board.

1697.

1699. Sept. 26.

Though, when the despotism of Andros was subverted by the movement in Massachusetts, it became necessary for Rhode Island to organize

some common government over her nine unquiet towns, the Revolution was by no means so joyful an event to her people as to those of the other. colonies of New England. Rhode Island had never been a place so little disorderly, and so little disagreeable to live in, as under Andros's absolute sway; nor was he subject, within her bounds, to the same motives to act with rigor as those which dictated his course in Massachusetts.

Rhode Island had with little reluctance yielded her charter, and with it her liberty, to King James; and to many of her most considerable citizens even that little reluctance was offensive. Of course Andros's hatred of Massachusetts did not harm his popularity in the sister colony. When the deposed governor broke gaol and ran away, it was to Rhode Island that he directed his steps. He was stopped and delivered to officers sent after him from Massachusetts, and his captors made a merit of his arrest; but one may be pardoned for doubting whether this would have been, had circumstances been such as to admit of his being suffered to pass without their being called to account. Letters written to London by influential citizens of the little colony bewailed his removal as bringing them into a condition hard to be endured; and, on the other hand, he stood by them in England in that important controversy which they were maintaining against Connecticut. The lapse of eight months had 1690. given them opportunity to form some cal- Jan. 30.

culation respecting the probability that the new order of things would prove stable, before they were prepared to report to the King what they had been doing.

When "under a sense of their deplorable and unsettled condition," after the fall of Andros, they determined to have a governor of their own as of old, it was only on a third election that they found a candidate who would consent to attempt to rule them. The Quaker, Walter Clarke, the last governor under the charter, having refused to resume his place, John Coggeshall, the last deputy-governor, remained at the head of the

administration for several months, at the

Feb. 27. end of which, Clarke still persisting in his preference for retirement, and Christopher Almy also declining the unattractive honor of the chief magistracy, it was conferred on the Quaker, Henry Bull, who, however, after a single year's service, declined it, as did also John Coggeshall,

May 7.

who had filled the second place. The next governor was John Easton, from the time of whose election the records contain no information on the subject for five years. That Easton's administration was not satisfactory or prosperous

1691. may be partly inferred from his reporting Nov. 19. to the King that he could not furnish his colony's contingent of troops, because he could not raise the necessary money. In the last year of this interval Caleb Carr was governor, and he was succeeded by Walter Clarke, during whose