Settlement of Connecticut. In 1633 members of the New Plymouth colony established a trading post on the Connecticut River near Windsor, and John Oldham, of Massachusetts, explored the valley. Returning home, Oldham gave a good report of the fertility of the region, whereupon three bands of Massachusetts people, who were dissatisfied with the autocratic government of the Puritan colony, swarmed thither from the parent hive, founding Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford in 1634-35. In 1639 they drew up an instrument known as the "Fundamental Orders of Government," which did not differ so greatly from the Massachusetts polity as would be expected. Still, it was somewhat more democratic, the authority of the governor being limited to that of presiding office of the general court, the supreme authority, which was composed of representatives from the towns. Governor and magistrates were elected by the people. There was no clear separation of executive, legislative, and judicial functions of government. No religious test was required for citizenship. In 1659 a property qualification (possession of an estate of £30) was imposed for suffrage.

Meanwhile, a party of Puritans from England who had sojourned one year in Boston founded New Haven, purchasing the land from the Indians. These colonists, being devout members of the mechanic and agricultural "middle-class" in the old country, were too busy hewing out homes and farms from the forest to concern themselves with pen-work, and so they drew up a brief "plantation covenant" which made the Bible the supreme guide in civil as in religious affairs.

During the next year, with more leisure, the settlers adopted the rules of Scripture as specifically applicable

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to the choice of magistrates, the enactment and repeal of laws, the dividing of inheritances, etc., and ordained that only church members should become free burgesses. Officials were selected from the same class by an intermediate process, all the burgesses choosing twelve of their number, who in turn choose seven others to administer the affairs of the colony.'

Other towns sprang up around the parent stock of New Haven-one, indeed (Southold), a plant from seed wafted across the Sound to eastern Long Islandand they were admitted on equal terms into the government of the colony.

In 1644 the general court adopted "the judicial laws of God as they were declared by Moses" as the rule for all courts "till they be branched out into particulars hereafter." Accordingly the common law of England was ignored, with the safeguard of trial by jury; the death penalty was inflicted for adultery, etc.; severe punishment was meted out to Sabbath-breakers, and heavy fines were imposed for harboring "Quaker or other blasphemous hereticks." These are known as

the "Blue Laws of Connecticut."2

This principle the makers of the Constitution adopted in the device of the Electoral College for the selection of a President and Vice-President-an expedient for the controlling the will of the people which the spirit of democracy has rendered futile by the obvious parry of rigidly instructing the electors, with the result that membership in the College has become an empty honor, largely sought after, not by the best people, as fondly expected by the "Fathers," but by the ostentatious rich men who contribute to campaign funds.

The Rev. Samuel Peters, a loyalist clergyman of the Church of England, who had been forced to flee from Connecticut preceding the Revolution, published at London in 1781 a General History of Connecticut in which appeared a collection of forty-five laws of this character which he imputed to the New Haven colony. Some of them, however, were laws passed elsewhere in New England, and others—and these the most extreme and therefore the most quoted-were not in force in

Soon after the restoration to the throne of Charles II., the Hartford Colony applied to that complaisant monarch for a charter of territory and government. This was granted in 1662, and the king, always generous in disposing of others' rights and property, also included in the charter the whole colony of New Haven without even consulting that theocracy. New Haven naturally resisted the incorporation, and it was not until 1665 that complete union with Hartford was effected, that city becoming the seat of government. From 1701 to 1873, when Hartford again became the capital, the government alternated its seat annually between the towns.

In 1685, a quo warranto was issued by James II. against the colony for the repeal of the charter. No judgment appears to have been rendered upon it; but the colony offered its submission to the will of the Crown; and Sir Edmund Andros, in 1687, went to Hartford, and, in the name of the Crown, declared the government dissolved. The people did not, however, surrender the charter, but secreted it in an oak (which remained to be venerated until 1856, when it was felled by a storm), and immediately after the revolution of 1688 they resumed the exercise of all its powers. The successors of the Stuarts silently suffered the people of Connecticut to retain the charter until the Revolution, and it continued to be maintained as a fundamental law of the State until the year 1818, when a new constitution of government was framed and adopted by the people.

Sketch of Williams. Roger Williams, the son of a London tailor, fell under the notice of Sir Edward Coke

Connecticut. This has been demonstrated by Walter F. Prince in "The Report of the American Historical Association for 1898."

as a boy of parts, and that great jurist educated him at the Charter House School and at Cambridge University. According to tradition he then studied law under Coke; certainly he studied theology about that time, for, two years after graduation from the university, he became a private chaplain to a member of the nobility. Refusing preferment to a "living" from conscientious scruples, he decided to emigrate to New England, and, in 1631, came with his wife to Boston. He was soon attached to the church at Salem as teacher and pastor's assistant. Here he taught that the civil power had no proper jurisdiction over the consciences of men, and magistrates should not require an unregenerate man to commit sacrilege by taking an oath, since this is a form of worship. He also asserted that the patent of the Crown conveyed no just title to the land, which should be bought from its rightful owners, the Indians.

These doctrines, attacking as they did the religious and civil jurisdiction of the authorities of the colony, caused Williams to be brought to trial by the general court in July, 1635. The general court condemned Williams, but gave him time to recant his subversive doctrine until the next session. Not having done so, at the meeting in October it was ordered that he leave the colony within six weeks. The time was subsequently extended on conditions, but in January, 1636, an attempt was made to seize him and transport him to England. Forewarned, he escaped from Salem into the jurisdiction of New Plymouth colony, whence at the instance of the authorities, he proceeded southward with four companions, and found a settlement which he called Providence, in memorial of "God's merciful providence to him in his distress."

Settlement of Rhode Island. Williams established friendly relations with the Indians in the vicinity, and learned their language, and, in accordance with his principles, bought from them the land of the "plantation." The influence which he thus acquired enabled him in the same year to return good for evil to those who had despitefully used him, by inducing the tribe, the Narragansetts, to ally themselves with the Massachusetts colonists in the Pequod War.

Williams and his associates founded the settlement on the principle of complete religious toleration, and many persons "distressed for conscience" resorted thither from the Pilgrim and Puritan colonies. Among these were Anabaptists, who converted Williams to the doctrine of immersion, and with them he established the First Baptist Church in America. In a few months, however, to preserve his liberty of conscience, he separated himself from the sect, and became what was known as a "Seeker," or Independent, continuing, however, to preach.

Antinomians under William Coddington, John Clarke, and Anne Hutchinson formed a settlement in 1638 at Portsmouth in the northern part of the island of Aquidneck in Narragansett Bay. In 1639 Coddington and Clarke removed to the southern end of the island and founded Newport. In 1643 seceders from Providence founded Warwick on the western shore of Narragansett Bay, ten miles south of Providence.

In 1643 Williams went to England, and secured in the same year from the Earl of Warwick a charter of incorporation of these settlements with Providence. In the following year he obtained from Parliament (Charles I. having been driven from London) a charter for the four towns under the title of "The Providence