CHAPTER IX. Plymouth colony profited also by the religious dissensions of Massachusetts. William Vassall, one of the early 1638. Massachusetts assistants, an emigrant with Winthrop and the charter, but less exclusive in his religious views, having returned from England, had established himself at Scituate, the second town in that colony. Settlements also had been more recently commenced at Taunton, Sandwich, and Yarmouth, and presently at Barnstable, in part, at least, by persons discontented with the strict regimen of Massachusetts. An opposite reason led to the foundation of still another independent colony. In the height of the Hutchinson controversy, John Davenport, an eminent nonconformist minister from London, had arrived at Boston, and with him a wealthy company, led by two merchants, Theophilus Eaton and Edward Hopkins. Alarmed at the new opinions and religious agitations of which Massachusetts was the seat, notwithstanding very advantageous offers of settlement there, they preferred to establish a separate community of their own, to be forever free from the innovations of error and licentiousness. Eaton and others sent to explore the coast west of the Connecticut, selected a place for settlement near the head of a spacious bay at Quinapiack, or, as the Dutch called it, Red Hill, where they built a hut, and spent April 13. the winter. They were joined in the spring by the rest of their company, and Davenport preached his first sermon under the shade of a spreading oak. Presently they entered into what they called a "plantation covenant," and a communication being opened with the Indians, who were but few in that neighborhood, the lands of Quinapiack were purchased, except a small reservation on the east side of the bay, the Indians receiving a few presents and a promise of protection. A tract north IX. of the bay, ten miles in one direction and thirteen in CHAPTER the other, was purchased for ten coats; and the colonists proceeded to lay out in squares the ground-plan of 1638. a spacious city, to which they presently gave the name of NEW HAVEN. The towns on the Connecticut, awaiting an arrangement with the lords proprietors in England, had delayed coming to any permanent political settlement. They suspected that Massachusetts intended to subject them to her jurisdiction. This intention the Massachusetts magistrates denied; but they were eager for a federal union, for which negotiations had been for some time going on. As the jealousy of the Connecticut towns placed serious obstacles in the way even of such a union, Massachusetts insisted that at least Springfield, which fell within the limits of her charter, should submit to her jurisdiction. The other three towns, in a convention of all the freemen, adopted a written consti- 1639. tution, based on that of Massachusetts, but different in Jan. 14. one important particular. As at Plymouth, residents of acceptable character might be admitted freemen, though not church members. The magistrates or assistants were to be chosen annually; but no magistrate was to be newly elected till he had first stood propounded or nominated for a year. The governor, required to be a church member, was to be chosen from among the magistrates, but could not be elected for two years in succession. Hopkins had concluded to settle at Hartford, and, alternately with Haynes, was chosen governor for many years. The governor and assistants acted as a court of law, and, with a House of Deputies chosen by the towns, composed a General Court, with the same jurisdiction as in Massachusetts, but the deputies were to sit by themselves as a separate body—an arrangement not yet CHAPTER adopted in the mother colony. Mason was chosen militaIX. ry chief, an office which he held for the rest of his lite 1638. on a salary of forty pounds a year. The first General Oct. Court enacted, a body of laws, any deficiencies in which were to be supplied by "the rule of the word of God." Alarm at some hostile proceedings of the Dutch, and apprehensions of the Indians by whom they were surrounded, soon caused the treaty for a federal union with Massachusetts to be renewed. Fort Saybrook constituted a separate jurisdiction, under the English proprietors, one of whom, Fenwick, arrived there about this time, with his own family and some others. After living for a year under their plantation covenant, the settlers at Quinapiack proceeded to a more 1639. definite organization. They agreed, in the first place, June 4. to limit the right to participate in the government to church members, and to adopt the Scriptures-esteemed a perfect rule for all duties as the law of the land. The church was organized with great care. After prayers and a sermon, twelve persons were elected by the body of the colonists, with power, after trial of each other, to designate seven of their own number as the seven pillars-a scriptural and mystical number, as Davenport's preliminary sermon had proved. These seven were to admit such additional church members as Oct. 25. they saw fit. The church being organized, and a body of freemen thus provided, Eaton was chosen governor, an office to which he was annually re-elected for twenty years. There was no trial by jury at New Haven, no warrant being found for it in the word of God. The regulations and judicial proceedings of this colony, deeply tinged by Puritan austerity, have been objects, under the derisive name of "blue laws," of some exaggeration and much ridicule. IX. Massachusetts, however, was hardly behind New Ha- CHAPTER ven in zeal for the purity of the faith. An attempt to establish at Weymouth a new church, on the latitudina- 1639. rian principle of admitting all baptized persons, without requiring either profession of faith or relation of experience, was promptly suppressed. Lenthall, the proposed minister, was forced to make a very humble apology, and soon found it expedient to take refuge at Aquiday. Şeveral laymen, active in the business, were heavily fined; one was whipped, and another disfranchised. The General Court had already made some provision toward educating a succession of learned ministers, by establishing a school at Newtown, the name of which had 1638. been changed to Cambridge, in honor of the university where most of the Massachusetts ministers had received their education. Endowed by John Harvard, a minister who died shortly after his arrival, with his library and the gift of half his estate, amounting to £800, or $3840, this school was now erected into a college, named after 1639. its benefactor, and placed under the superintendence of a board of overseers, composed of the magistrates and the ministers of the six neighboring churches. Henry Dunster, a distinguished Hebrew scholar, just arrived in the colony, was chosen the first president. Besides occasional annual grants, and contributions taken up for its benefit, the income of the ferry between Boston and Charlestown was bestowed on the college. A printing press, said to have been the gift of some friends in Holland, was set up at Cambridge, under the charge of Stephen Day, the first, probably, in America. Its first literary production was a new metrical version 1640. of the Psalms, prepared by Eliot, Welde, and Mather, and revised by Dunster, which, though not very remarkable for tunefulness, long continued to be used in the worship of the New England churches. CHAPTER IX. Winthrop's re-election as governor three times in succession since the defeat of Vane began to excite some 1639. jealousy. Such repeated re-elections "might make way for a governor for life;" which, indeed, had been " "propounded" by some of the elders and magistrates, "as most agreeable to God's institution, and the practice of all well-ordered states." But in this opinion the freemen of Massachusetts did by no means concur. Connecticut, as we have just seen, had taken special pains, in its fundamental constitutions, to guard against any such result. A like jealousy also exhibited itself on the subject of the Standing Council for Life. Endicott had been added to that council as a third member; it never seems to have had any others. Though still allowed to retain the superintendence of military affairs, its members were forbidden to act as magistrates, unless specially chosen at the annual elections. The next year the ro1640. tation principle prevailed, and Dudley was chosen governor; but the colonists showed their regard for Winthrop by contributing upward of three thousand dollars toward the discharge of a heavy pecuniary liability, likely to become very embarrassing to him, in which he had been. involved by the dishonesty of his agent in England. While these various events were taking place in New England, the alarm of danger from home, though somewhat diminished, had by no means wholly subsided. To Mason's process of Quo Warranto, those members of the company resident in England, on whom it had been served, pleaded a disclaimer; but the death of Mason, already mentioned, prevented further proceedings with 1637. that suit. An order, however, was presently issued by the Lords Commissioners for Plantations, that no person of the rank of a "subsidy man," that is, rated to the taxes called subsidies, should embark for America without spe |