IX.

CHAPTER chester, the van of this emigration, led by the disappointed Ludlow, and driving their cattle before them, thread1635. ed the pathless forests, guided by the compass, and, after

an arduous journey of fourteen days, reached the ConNov. necticut at the Plymouth trading house. The commissioners sent a party by water from Boston, and Fort Saybrook was commenced at the river's mouth, thus anticipating the Dutch of Manhattan, who were just about taking possession of it, as a support to their fort of Good Hope, up the river, situate just below the Plymouth trading house. The party at Saybrook was soon joined by Gardiner, an engineer sent from England by the lords proprietors, with a small vessel and a supply of provisions.

The winter set in early, and with great severity; the river was soon frozen, and the Massachusetts emigrants were thus disappointed in the expected arrival of a ves sel from Boston with provisions and supplies. Some, with no small difficulty and hazard, retraced their steps through the snowy woods; others descended on the ice to Fort Saybrook, and returned to Boston by water. The few who remained through the winter hardly kept themselves alive. Most of the cattle perished; and this heavy loss seemed to the elder Winthrop and other opposers of the emigration something very like a judgment.

During the winter a rumor began to spread that the banished Williams intended to establish a new settlement out of the limits of the Massachusetts patent. Should this project be carried out, the magistrates feared "the infection would easily spread," many persons being very much carried away" with apprehension of his godliness." To prevent such an untoward result, it was resolved to arrest Williams and to send him prisoner to England. A warrant was issued, and Captain Under

IX.

hill was dispatched with fourteen men to execute it; but CHAPTER Williams had warning, and was gone. In the midst of that severe winter he wandered for fourteen weeks in 1635. the woods without a guide, with no settled lodging, and with scanty food. He found refuge at last, and hospitality, from Massasoit, head chief of the Wampanoags, whom he had known while at Plymouth; and presently, under a grant from that chief, he commenced a little 1636. plantation at Seekonk, on the east side of Pawtucket or Narraganset River, just within the limits of the Plym outh patent. He still had friends in that colony; Bradford esteemed him a man "godly and zealous, having many precious parts, though very unsettled in judg ments;" but the influence of Massachusetts was felt there; and Winslow, who, since his return from England, had been elected Governor of Plymouth, sent to Williams, claiming Seekonk, and suggesting his removal beyond that jurisdiction. Thus advised, he crossed the Pawtucket, and, with five companions, established an independent community at the head of Narraganset Bay, beyond the territory either of Massachusetts or Plymouth, in the midst of powerful Indian tribes, and with little hope of sympathy or succor on the part of either of those colonies. A grant of the land was obtained from Canonicus, head sachem of the Narragansets; and Williams named the settlement PROVIDENCE, in commemoration of "God's merciful providence to him in his distress."

Williams, however, was not the first settler within the present limits of the State of Rhode Island. Blackstone, the "old planter," the first white inhabitant of the peninsula of Boston, had removed, a year or two before, to the same Pawtucket River, but higher up, where the stream still bears his name. He had received from

CHAPTER the town of Boston, under the established regulation on

IX. that subject, his grant of fifty acres. Like Maverick and 1636. some other of the old planters, though no church mem

ber, he had been admitted a freeman of the company; but he sold his land, bought cattle, and removed. He left England because he could not endure the lords. bishops, and he liked the "lords brethren" just as little. Such was his account of the matter; yet he had no sympathy with Williams, and continued to acknowledge the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.

Not discouraged by the hardships of the past winter nor the prognostications of opposers, the emigration to Connecticut was still persevered in. Early in the spring, March. Hooker and Stone, with the principal part of their congregation, having sold out their improvements at Newtown to a company just arrived from England, traveled through the woods on Ludlow's track, driving their cattle before them. They founded the town of Hartford. The Dorchester people, who were presently joined by Warham, their surviving minister, settled a little above, at Windsor.

The men of Plymouth, chagrined at seeing possession thus taken of a territory which they had been the first to occupy-an enterprise in which Massachusetts had declined to unite-demanded of the emigrants compensation for their trading house and the lands about it, which they had bought of the Indians; and ultimately they received a partial indemnification. A party of emigrants from Watertown fixed themselves at Wethersfield, just below Hartford. A fourth emigrant

party from Roxbury, led by Pynchon, established themselves some twenty miles higher up the river, at Springfield. The emigrants took with them a commission of government, the joint act of the Massachusetts General Court and of the commissioners representing the lords

proprietors of Connecticut.

The places which they va- CHAPTER

IX.

cated were filled up at once by new comers, and new churches were organized at Newtown and Dorchester, 1636. the one under Shepherd, the other under Richard Mather, whose son and grandson were afterward so distinguished in the history of the colony.

About the time of this migration the government of Massachusetts was brought nearly into the shape in which it remained for the next fifty years. The regular sessions of the General Court were reduced to two in a year; one to follow the Court of Elections, the other in the autumn. The deputies were limited to two for the larger towns, and one for the smaller, chosen by ballot, at first, for each separate court, but afterward for a year. They were not required to be residents of the towns for which they sat, though usually they were so, but might be chosen from the colony at large. The governor and assistants, who had all along acted as a court of justice, were required to hold four great quarter courts yearly, at Boston, for the trial of more considerable cases. Smaller cases were to be disposed of by inferior courts, composed of five judges, of whom one at least was to be an assistant, the others to be selected by the General Court from a nomination made by the several towns; but only the assistants were to have authority to issue process. These inferior courts were to be held quarterly at Ipswich, Salem, Newtown, and Boston-the rudiments of a division into counties. An appeal lay from their decision to the quarter courts, and thence to the General Court.

As a step toward meeting the views of those "persons of quality" desirous, on account of the disastrous state of political affairs in England, to remove to America, it was resolved to establish a standing council for life, of which the governor for the time being was to be

CHAPTER president.

To the propositions heretofore mentioned, IX. brought out by Humphrey, a detailed answer was now 1636. returned. It had been suggested in those propositions that the Commonwealth should consist of two ranks : "hereditary gentlemen," to sit in their own right as an upper house of legislation, and "freeholders," to be rep resented by their deputies in a lower house. To this close imitation of the English Constitution there was no objection, so far as related to the two ranks, at least on the part of the magistrates and elders, who readily ac knowledged the propriety of such a distinction "from the light of nature and Scripture." But the plan of heredi tary legislators, and the proposal to admit all freeholders to the rights of citizenship, were irreconcilable with that theocratic scheme to which the Massachusetts leaders were so zealously attached. In a letter which Cotton wrote on this occasion to Lord Say, democracy is denounced as "not a fit government either for church or state." "If the people are governors, who shall be gov erned ?" He admits that monarchy and aristocracy are approved and directed in Scripture," "but only as a theocracy is set up in both." It was hoped to satisfy the aristocratic predilections of the proposed immigrants by establishing a magistracy for life; but for the church members to abandon the theocratic principle, and to yield their monopoly of power by admitting all freeholders to the rights of freemen, was not to be thought of. The existing system was even strengthened by an enactment that no new church should be gathered without the express sanction of the magistrates and elders.

May 25.

At the ensuing Court of Elections, Winthrop and Dudley were chosen members of the newly-established Standing Council for Life; and to that council were presently transferred the extensive powers of the military commis.