25. The Planting of Connecticut

Rhode Island was not the only New England colony settled by former residents of Massachusetts Bay. But whereas Rhode Island was peopled by exiles and refugees, the exodus to Connecticut—the other area of southern New England not covered by charter or other royal grant of ownership—was largely voluntary.

From the early 1630s the Connecticut vacuum proved to be a magnet for settlers from several of the colonies. The first settlers were Dutch from New Amsterdam, who in mid-1633 established a trading post—for trade with the Indians—at Fort Good Hope (now Hartford). The preceding fall, Edward Winslow, a leader of Plymouth, had explored the Connecticut River Valley; after unsuccessfully trying to promote a joint Plymouth-Massachusetts expedition in the summer, he organized a trading post on the river at Windsor, north of Hartford, in the fall of 1634. John Oldham, from Massachusetts, founded a small settlement, at about the same time, at Pyquag (Wethersfield), south of Hartford on the Connecticut River. In the following year, other groups from the Bay settled around Hartford and even at Windsor, in defiance of Plymouth’s claim to engrossment of the area.

In the summer of 1635, a Dutch vessel, erecting a fort and trading post at the mouth of the Connecticut River, was forcibly driven off by John Winthrop, Jr., a son of the Massachusetts governor and an agent of Lord Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, and other lords who had jointly received a grant of the territory from the Council for New England. Winthrop named the conquered settlement Saybrook in his patron’s honor.

One of the most important founders of Connecticut was Rev. Thomas Hooker, minister at Newton in the Bay Colony. While Hooker was scarcely a libertarian, he was a moderate who was highly critical of the rigors of the Massachusetts theocracy. Hooker especially objected to the policy of admitting only a minority to membership in the approved Puritan churches, and of the virtually automatic reelection of state officials that had been instituted by the ruling oligarchy. Hooker also urged a clearer definition of the laws in order to limit the arbitrary rule of the magistrates. Finally, Hooker and his followers left Massachusetts in 1636 to settle at Hartford, his associates being led by the wealthy John Haynes and the lawyer Roger Ludlow, who moved southwestward in three years to found the Connecticut towns of Fairfield and Stratford. These and the previous river towns had all been settled with the permission of Massachusetts. But now a conflict arose between the claims of the English lords to the entire Connecticut Valley (as well as to Saybrook), and the right of the settlers themselves. In March 1636 the Massachusetts General Court, in a decision agreed upon by Hooker, the Connecticut settlers, and Winthrop—who had been regarded as governor of the territory—created a commission to govern the Connecticut River towns. In the joint agreement, Massachusetts—and Winthrop—ceded all governmental powers to the commission (all commissioners were to be residents of the territory), which was empowered to govern with the consent of all the inhabitants—thereby at least formally widening the base of government beyond the body of church membership. The commission was to be temporary, lasting only a year, but the effect was to relinquish all of Massachusetts’ and Winthrop’s claims to the river towns, and to leave Winthrop in charge of Saybrook.

Early the following year, three river towns—Hartford, Windsor (which had bought out Plymouth’s claim), and Wethersfield—elected three men from each town to meet as a General Court and act as the sovereign governmental authority. In the spring of 1638, the Reverend Mr. Hooker declared in an election-day sermon that the “foundation of authority is laid... in the free consent of the people”; in January 1639 the three towns established their own permanent government based on a written constitution, the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The most northerly river town of Agawam (Springfield), led by William Pynchon, refused to join in this constitution, and instead submitted itself (permanently, as it eventually turned out) to Massachusetts’ rule.

The Fundamental Orders, largely inspired by Hooker, provided for a unicameral General Court of four deputies from each of the towns, as well as an annually elected governor and assistants. The governor was to be subordinate to the General Court, which had the legislative power not subject to any gubernatorial veto. Furthermore, the governor and the assistants could not serve for two consecutive years. These provisions, however, did not prevent the assistants from forming an oligarchy, by obtaining a veto power over the General Court. Yet the united colony of Connecticut still remained a federation of independent towns, since all power not expressly granted to the General Court continued to be reserved to the separate towns.

Let it not be thought, however, that the more democratic Connecticut framework was significantly less intolerant than Massachusetts Bay. The Connecticut leaders agreed with Massachusetts that a major task of the state was to compel uniformity of religious creed. Connecticut’s law of 1642 provided that if “any man after legal conviction shall have or worship any other God but the Lord God, he shall be put to death.” In 1644 the General Court established the Puritan church by taxing all residents for its support. And failure to attend a Puritan church, or speaking critically of its official doctrine, was outlawed and punished by stiff fines. While there was no official religious test for voting in Connecticut, as there was in the Bay, suffrage was restricted to freemen. Admission to the ranks of freemen was, in effect, restricted to orthodox churchmen, the admission being decided by the General Court itself. And one of the requirements for admission was that the person be of “peaceable and honest conversation”; interpretation of this vague test rested with the authorities. The chief difference between Massachusetts and Connecticut rule was that Hooker and Connecticut based the government of the colony on the body of orthodox church members, while Massachusetts government was far more centered in the hands of an oligarchy of magistrates and ministers.

Whereas local town government was guarded against any invasion by central government power, the same cannot be said for the liberty of the individual in Connecticut. Land allocation was, as in Massachusetts, under the control of the local oligarchy; land reverted to the ownership of the town if the individual owner moved away; forced labor was imposed for road building; and strangers had to be admitted by the town government. Blasphemy, drunkenness, and the like were outlawed and indentured servants jealously guarded. Speech critical of the government was severely punished. One woman was duly executed for expressing anti-Christian sentiments. A score of women were punished for alleged witchcraft and several hanged—the persecution of “witches” reached a peak in the early 1660s. Repeatedly, in the late 1640s and 1650s, the Connecticut government took steps to overrule the towns so as not to admit supposed “undesirables” to residence. Minimum requirements of property for “freemen” and for “admitted inhabitants” were imposed. By the 1660s oligarchy in Connecticut had grown considerably and at the expense of the originally more democratic framework envisioned by Thomas Hooker.

Meanwhile, what of Saybrook? By the early 1640s, the English lords had lost interest in their claims and had, at least de facto, abandoned them. The only proprietor living at Saybrook was George Fenwick, who illegally and without consulting his partners sold the ownership of Saybrook to Connecticut in exchange for the privilege of exacting tolls on goods passing through the mouth of the Connecticut River. From the time of this agreement, in 1643–44, Connecticut assumed complete jurisdiction over Saybrook.

By 1662 fifteen towns had associated themselves in the Connecticut colony. Most of them were situated on the Connecticut River; the others were in the Fairfield-Stratford area to the southwest, on Long Island Sound, or eastward in the New London area. In addition, several townships on Long Island had joined Connecticut, including Southampton, Huntington, and Oyster Bay.

Completely separate from the Connecticut towns, for over a generation, was the Colony of New Haven. The founder of New Haven was the Reverend John Davenport, who arrived in Boston from England with his followers just in time to play a leading role in the persecution of Anne Hutchinson. To Davenport, mirabile dictu, Massachusetts Bay was lax and soft and not nearly theocratic enough. And so the Reverend Mr. Davenport, along with the wealthy merchant Theophilus Eaton, founded New Haven as an independent town in the spring of 1638. The land was purchased from the Indians. Davenport and Eaton made sure that their ruling theocracy would be really oligarchic, without any of the Bay Colony’s democratic taint. In mid-1639, they selected twelve men, who in turn chose seven men, to begin the church, and government, of the town. This committee of seven had absolute power over admission of any member to the church, and only church members, of course, could vote in governmental elections. The result was that at the outset over one-half of the inhabitants of New Haven town were disfranchised, an achievement which Massachusetts took a score of years of growth and immigration to emulate.

The laws of New Haven were expressly to be confined to the “laws of God,” as interpreted by the ruling clique. The seven committeemen, known as the “pillars of the church,” chose nine or more additional men to constitute the General Court of the town. This court elected a magistrate and four deputies who served as judges. There was no need for jury trial, as the answers were to be found by the judges in the Bible. The town’s General Court was the sole “town meeting.” In short, there was little for even the restricted voting list to vote about.

The New Haven settlers soon founded other towns: in 1639, nearby Milford and Guilford on the coast, followed by Stamford, some distance to the southwest, in 1641. Milford, founded by Rev. Peter Prudden, was more democratic than the other towns. The rules on church membership and voting were relaxed, so that only less than one-fifth of the populace was disfranchised, and at least a handful of local leaders remained outside the church. A more rigid deviation from the New Haven norm characterized the town of Guilford, founded by Rev. Henry Whitfield, a friend of Hooker and Fenwick. In Guilford, political privileges were restricted not simply to Puritan church members, but to members of Whitfield’s own church.

Stamford was settled in a manner completely different from the settling of other towns. New Haven had recently acquired a tract of land via one of the usual arbitrary purchases from the Indians. Anxious to settle the land, Davenport persuaded a group of dissidents in Wethersfield, Connecticut, headed by Rev. Richard Denton, to found a settlement (Stamford) there. In return, Stamford would submit to the jurisdiction of New Haven, send deputies to New Haven’s town court, and accept magistrates and officials chosen by the New Haven court.

Another town settled by New Haven was Southold, in 1640, on the northeastern tip of Long Island. The tract had been purchased from someone who had a dubious grant from the old Council for New England. On that tract Southold was founded by Rev. John Youngs. Again, New Haven retained jurisdiction.

In 1643 these five towns—New Haven and its cluster of two (Stamford and Southold), and the two independent towns of Milford and Guilford—united to form the Colony of New Haven. The Frame of Government of the colony restricted suffrage in the same way as in the original New Haven town; indeed, each town’s government was similar to New Haven’s. Over each government was the central government of the colony. The approved church members—the freemen—elected the deputies from each town, a governor, and a court of magistrates; all of these constituted the unicameral General Court, which exercised the colony’s legislative, executive, and judicial functions. The colony, however, was a loose confederation of towns, each town being autonomous in its own affairs.

So entrenched was the original oligarchy that Theophilus Eaton had no difficulty in remaining magistrate of New Haven town and governor of the colony from the beginning until his death in 1658.

Other towns added later to New Haven Colony were Branford, near New Haven, and Greenwich, as an addition to Stamford. No further foothold was gotten on Long Island; the towns there decided to join Connecticut. The failure of Southampton, Huntington, and Oyster Bay to join New Haven Colony was a particularly bitter blow, since New Haven had helped finance their settlement. The Long Island towns, however, objected particularly to New Haven’s highly restrictive franchise.

As we might expect, the theocratic rigors of New Haven Colony were severe indeed. Drunkenness and sexual misdeeds were not only outlawed, but regulated minutely by the authorities. Even card playing, dancing, and singing were partially prohibited, because they tended to corrupt the youth and were a “misspense of precious time.” Smoking in public was prohibited. The laws were enforced with particular severity against the lower classes—servants and seamen especially. Punishment was inflicted by stocks, pillories, whipping, and imprisonment, and some persons were executed for the crime of adultery. In a typical sentence in New Haven town, Goodman Hunt and his wife were banished from the town because he allowed someone else to kiss Mrs. Hunt on a Sunday.

New Haven did not turn out to be a flourishing colony, and much of the capital of the merchants was dissipated in unprofitable ventures. Not the least of these were the repeated and unsuccessful attempts to plant New Haven colonies far to the southwest, along the banks of the Delaware River.

One trouble was that the Delaware already had settlements, and non-English ones at that. Sweden’s New Sweden Company had planted a settlement at Fort Christina (Wilmington) in 1637, headed by the Dutchman Peter Minuit. The Dutch established their own settlements on the river shortly thereafter. New Haven merchants organized the Delaware Company, and in 1640 their expedition, headed by Capt. George Lamberton and Capt. Nathaniel Turner, settled at Salem Creek, on the east bank of the river. Swedish and especially Dutch pressure against the colonists, added to the severe conditions, forced the closing of the settlement. Many years later, in the mid-1650s, New Haven projected a much larger, better-organized settlement on the Delaware, but this too never materialized. New Haven was anxious for others to make war upon the Dutch, to oust them from the Delaware and pave the way for their own colonial expansion. Massachusetts, however, wisely refused to be persuaded to war upon the Dutch for New Haven’s advantage, and the New Haveners were bitterly disappointed when Cromwell made peace with Holland.

Discontent against the tight oligarchic rule was manifest in the colony by the 1650s especially outside the town of New Haven. When war loomed against the Dutch in the mid-1650s, citizens of Stamford, Milford, and Southold demanded an extension of the highly restricted suffrage and the substitution of regular English law for the rigors of the “Bible Commonwealth.” Robert Basset of Stamford was a particularly vocal dissident, attacking the government as tyrannical, and one under which justice could not possibly be obtained. The colony cracked down severely on all dissidents, hauling them into court and charging them with an attempt to change, undermine, and overthrow constituted authority, and with breaking their loyalty oaths by stirring up rebellion. All were convicted and heavily fined, and made haste to confess their sins. After this suppression, loyalty oaths were more widely imposed upon the inhabitants. Even so, grumbling continued against the high taxes and heavy debts stemming from increased governmental expenses for schools, meetinghouses, watchhouses, etc., and there was widespread tax evasion in the colony.