III WHEN GOVERNOR ANDROSS CAME TO CONNECTICUT
(Connecticut, 1675)
One of the most interesting stories in the history of the American colonies is that of the adventures of the judges who voted for the execution of King Charles I of England and who fled across the water when his son came to the throne as Charles II. They were known as the regicides, a name given to them because they were held to be responsible for the king's death. When Charles II came back to England as king, after the days when Oliver Cromwell was the Lord Protector, he pardoned many of the men who had taken sides against his father, but his friends urged him not to be so generous in his treatment of the judges. So he issued a proclamation, stating that such of the judges of King Charles I as did not surrender themselves as prisoners within fourteen days should receive no pardon. The regicides and their friends were greatly alarmed. Nineteen surrendered to the king's officers; some fled across the ocean; and others were arrested as they tried to escape. Ten of them were executed. Two, Edward Whalley and William Goffe, reached Boston Harbor in July, 1660. Another, John Dixwell, came afterward.
Governor Endicott and the leading men of Boston, not knowing how King Charles intended to treat the judges, welcomed them as men who had held posts of honor in England. They were entertained most hospitably in the little town, and they went about quite freely, making no attempt to conceal from any one who they were.
Then word came to Boston that the king regarded the escaped judges as traitors. Immediately many of those who had been friendly to the regicides slunk away from them, avoiding them as if they had the plague. The judges heard, moreover, that now Governor Endicott had called a court of magistrates to order them seized and turned over to the executioner. So, as they had fled from England before, the hunted regicides now fled from the colony of Massachusetts Bay.
At the settlement of New Haven there were many who had been friends and followers of Oliver Cromwell, and the regicides turned in that direction. They reached that town in March, 1661, and found a haven in the home of John Davenport, a prominent minister. Here they were among friends, and here they went about as freely as they had done at first in Boston; and everybody liked them, for they were fine, honorable men, who had done their duty as they saw it when they had decreed the execution of King Charles I.
There came a royal order to Massachusetts, requiring the governor to arrest the fugitives. The governor and his officers were anxious to show their zeal in carrying out all the wishes of the new king, and so they gave a commission to two zealous young royalists, Thomas Kellond and Thomas Kirk, authorizing them to hunt through the colonies as far south as Manhattan Island for the missing judges and to bring them back to Boston.
The searchers set out at once, and went first to Governor Winthrop at Hartford. He gave them permission to arrest the regicides anywhere in the colony of Connecticut, but he assured them that he understood that the judges were not in his colony, but had gone on to the colony of New Haven. So they set forth again, and next day reached the town of Guilford, where they stopped to procure a warrant from Governor Leete, who lived there.
Governor Leete appeared to be very much surprised at the news the two men brought. He said that he didn't think the regicides were in New Haven. He took the papers bearing the orders of Governor Winthrop and read them in so loud a voice that the two men begged him to keep the matter more quiet, lest some traitors should overhear. Then he delayed furnishing them with fresh horses, and, the next day being Sunday, the pursuers were forced to wait over an extra day before they could continue their hunt.
In the meantime an Indian messenger was sent to New Haven in the night, to give warning of the pursuers. Then Governor Leete refused either to give the pursuers a warrant or to send men with them to arrest the regicides until he should have had a chance to consult with the magistrates, which meant that he himself would have to go to New Haven. The upshot of all this was that the pursuers stayed chafing in Guilford while the men they were hunting had plenty of time to escape.
John Davenport, the minister at New Haven, preached that Sunday morning to a congregation that had heard the news of the pursuit of the English judges. Davenport knew that the king of England had ordered the capture of the judges and that this colony of New Haven was part of the English realm. Yet, for the sake of mercy and justice, he urged his hearers to protect the fugitives who had taken refuge among them. Not in so many words did he urge it, but his hearers knew what he meant, for the text of his sermon, taken from the sixteenth chapter of Isaiah, read: "Take counsel, execute judgment, make thy shadow as the night in the midst of noonday; hide the outcasts, bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine outcasts dwell with thee; Moab, be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler." The congregation understood his meaning.
Early Monday morning Kellond and Kirk rode into New Haven, where the people met them with surly faces. They had to wait until Governor Leete arrived, and when he did he refused to take any steps in the matter until he had called the freemen together. The two pursuers, now growing angry, told the governor flatly that it looked to them as if he wanted the regicides to escape. Spurred on by this the governor called the magistrates together, but their decision was that they would have to call a meeting of the general court.
More exasperated than ever, the two hunters spoke plainly to Governor Leete. They pointed out that he was not behaving as loyally as the governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut had; they warned him against giving aid to traitors, and then they flatly asked whether he meant to obey King Charles or not.
"We honor His Majesty," answered Governor Leete, "but we have tender consciences."
The pursuers lodged at a little inn in New Haven. There the governor went that evening, and taking one of them by the hand, said, "I wish I had been a plowman, and had never been in office, since I find it so weighty."
"Will you own His Majesty or no?" demanded the two men from Massachusetts.
"We would first know whether His Majesty would own us," was the governor's guarded answer.
The officers of New Haven would not help them, the people were openly hostile, and so Kellond and Kirk left the colony, without having dared to search a single house. They went south to Manhattan Island, where the Dutch Governor Stuyvesant received them very politely, and promised to help them arrest the fugitives if the latter came to New Netherland. Then they went back to Boston, baffled of their quarry.
Now when the Indian messenger had come to New Haven the fugitive judges had fled from the town and spent the night at a mill two miles away. Then they went to a place called "Hatchet Harbor," where they stayed a couple of days, and from there to a cave upon a mountain that they called Providence Hill. This cave, ever since known as the "Judges' Cave," was a splendid hiding place. On the top of the mountain stood a group of pillars of trap rock, like a grove of trees. These rocks slanted inwards and so formed a room, the door of which could be hidden with boughs. Here the regicides hid for almost a month. A friend named Sperry, who lived in the neighborhood, brought them food. Sometimes he sent the provisions by his small son, who left the basket on the stump of a tree near the top of the mountain. The boy couldn't understand what became of the food and how it happened that he always found the basket empty when he returned for it the next day. The only answer the cautious father would give him was, "There's somebody at work in the woods who wants the food."
That part of the country near the "Judges' Cave" was full of wild animals. One night the regicides were visited by a panther that thrust its head in at the door of their cave and roared at them. One of the judges fled down the mountain to Sperry's house and gave the alarm, and the farmer and the fugitives hunted the panther the rest of the night.
After a while the fugitives decided that it would be better for their friends in the colony, and particularly for Mr. Davenport, if they should give themselves up in obedience to the command of King Charles. They left their cave and went to Guilford to see Governor Leete. But the governor and the other officers did not want to surrender them to the king. The judges hid in the governor's cellar, and were fed from his table, while he considered the best course to adopt. The colony of New Haven decided that it would not arrest them, and so the fugitives moved to the house of a Mr. Tompkins in Milford, where they stayed in hiding for two years.
The people of Milford did not know that the fugitives were there. One day a girl came to the house and happened to sing a ballad lately come from England, that made sport of the fugitive regicides. She sang the song in a room just above the one where the fugitives were, and they were so amused by the words that they asked Mr. Tompkins to have her come again and again and sing to her unseen audience.
Officers came out from England in 1664, charged, among other duties, with the arrest of the fugitive judges, and the friends of the regicides thought it best that they should leave Milford for some new hiding place. So in October they set out for the small town of Hadley, on the frontier of Massachusetts, a hundred miles from Milford, and so distant from Boston, Hartford and New Haven that it was thought that no one could trace them there. They traveled only at night, lying hidden in the woods by day. The places where they stopped they called Harbors, and the name still remains attached to one of them, now the flourishing town of Meriden, which bears the title of Pilgrim's Harbor. They reached Hadley in safety, and were taken in at the house of John Russell, a clergyman. He gave them room in his house, and there they spent the rest of their lives, safe from royal agents and spies in the small frontier settlement. So three of the men, who, doing their duty as they saw it, had voted for the execution of King Charles I, found a refuge in the American wilderness from the pursuit of his son, King Charles II.
Ten years later a very different sort of man came to the colony of Connecticut. King Charles I had made large grants in America to his brother the Duke of York, and among other territory that which had belonged to the Dutch, called New Netherland. The Duke of York made Major Edmund Andross, afterward Sir Edmund Andross, governor of all his territories, and sent him out to New England. With full powers from the Duke, Andross expected to do about as he pleased, and rule like a king in the new world.
By way of making a good start Edmund Andross at once laid claim to all the land that had belonged to the Dutch and also to that part of Connecticut that lay west of the Connecticut River. Unless the settlers in that part of Connecticut consented to his rule he threatened to invade their land with his soldiers. Now the people of Connecticut had received the boundary of their colony in an early grant, and though they already had the prospect of a war with the Indians under King Philip on their hands, their governor and his council determined to resist the cutting in two of their colony.
Word came to Hartford that Andross was about to land at the port of Saybrook and intended to march to Hartford, New Haven and other towns, suppress the colonial government and establish his own. At once colonial soldiers were sent to Saybrook and New London, and Captain Thomas Bull, in command at the former place, strengthened the fortifications there to resist the Duke of York's new governor.
July 9, 1675, the people of Saybrook saw an armed fleet heading for their fort. The men hurried to the fort and put themselves under the command of Captain Bull. Then a letter came from the governor at Hartford telling them what to do. "And if so be those forces on board should endeavor to land at Saybrook," so ran the order, "you are in His Majesty's name to forbid their landing. Yet if they should offer to land, you are to wait their landing and to command them to leave their arms on board; and then you may give them leave to land for necessary refreshing, peaceably, but so that they return on board again in a convenient time."
Major Andross sent a request that he might be allowed to land and meet the officers of Saybrook. The request was granted, and Captain Bull, with the principal men of the town, met the Englishman and his officers on the beach. Captain Bull stated the orders he had received from the governor of Connecticut. Andross, with great haughtiness, waved the orders aside, and told his clerk to read aloud the commission he held from the Duke of York.
But Captain Bull was not easily cowed. He ordered the clerk to stop his reading of the commission. The surprised clerk hesitated a minute, then went on with the reading. "Forbear!" thundered the captain, in a tone that startled even Major Andross.
The major, however, haughty and overbearing though he was, could not help but admire the other man's determined manner. "What is your name?" he asked.
"My name is Bull, sir," was the answer.
"Bull!" said Andross. "It is a pity that your horns are not tipped with silver."
Then, seeing that the captain and his men would not listen to his commission from the Duke of York, Andross returned to his small boat, and a few hours later his fleet sailed away from the harbor.
The colony of Connecticut, like those of Massachusetts and New York, now had a checkered career. Governor John Winthrop, who had done so much for his people, died. False reports of the colony were carried to England, the people were accused of harboring pirates and other outlaws. Finally, in 1686, Andross, now Sir Edmund Andross, was given a royal commission as governor of New England.
Sir Edmund went to Boston, and from there sent a message to the governor of Connecticut saying that he had received an order from the king to require Connecticut to give up its charter as a colony. The governor and council answered that, though they wished to do the king's bidding in all things, they begged that they might keep the original grants of their charter.
Sir Edmund's answer to that was to go to Hartford. October 31, 1687, he entered Hartford, accompanied by several gentlemen of his suite and with a body-guard of some sixty soldiers. He meant to take the charter in spite of all protests.
The governor and council met him with all marks of respect, but it was clear that they were not over-pleased to see him. Andross marched into the hall where the General Assembly was in session, demanded the charter, and declared that their present government was dissolved. Governor Treat protested, and eloquently told of all the early hardships of the colonists, their many wars with the Indians, the privations they had endured. Finally he said that it was like giving up his life to surrender the charter that represented rights and privileges they had so dearly bought and enjoyed for so long a time.
Sir Edmund listened to the governor's speech attentively. Looking about him at the citizens who had gathered in the Assembly Hall he realized that it would be well for him to obtain the charter as quietly as he could, and without waking too much spirit of resentment in the men of Hartford. Governor Treat's speech was long, the sun set, twilight came on, and still the charter of the colony had not been handed over to Sir Edmund.
The governor and the people knew that Sir Edmund meant to have the charter; he himself was prepared to stay there until they should hand the paper over to him. Candles were brought into the hall and their flickering light showed the spirited governor still arguing with the determined, haughty Sir Edmund. More people pressed into the room to hear the governor's words. Sir Edmund Andross glanced at the crowd; now they seemed peaceful people, not of the kind likely to make trouble.
Sir Edmund had listened to Governor Treat long enough. He grew impatient. He slapped his hand on the table in front of him, and stated again that he required the people of Connecticut to hand him over their charter, and that at once. The governor saw that Sir Edmund's patience was at an end, and whispered a word to his secretary. The secretary left the room, and when he returned he brought the precious charter in his hand.
The charter was laid on the table in full view of Sir Edmund and the men of the Assembly and the people who had crowded into the hall. Sir Edmund smiled; he had taught these stubborn Connecticut colonists a well-deserved lesson. He leaned forward in his chair, reaching out his hand for the parchment. At that very instant the candles went out, and the room was in total darkness.
No one spoke, there were no threats of violence, no motion toward Sir Edmund. In silence they waited for the relighting of the candles.
The clerks relighted the candles. Andross looked again at the table. The charter had disappeared. Andross stared at Governor Treat and the governor stared back at him, apparently as much amazed as was Sir Edmund at the disappearance. Then both men began to hunt. They looked in every corner of the room where the charter might have been hidden. But the charter had vanished in the time between the going-out of the candles and their relighting.
Sir Edmund, baffled and indignant, hid his anger as well as he could, and with his gentlemen and soldiers left the Assembly Room. Next day he took over control of the colony, and issued a proclamation that stated that by the king's order the government of the colony of Connecticut was annexed to that of Massachusetts and the other colonies under his rule. The orders he gave were harsh and tyrannical, and the people of the colony had little cause to like him.
What had become of the charter? When Governor Wellys, a former governor of Connecticut, had come to America he had sent his steward, a man named Gibbons, to prepare a country home for him. Gibbons chose a suitable place, and was cutting trees on a hill where the governor's house was to stand when some Indians from the South Meadow came up to him and begged him not to cut down an old oak that was there. "It has been the guide of our ancestors for centuries," said the leader of the Indians, "as to the time of planting our corn. When the leaves are of the size of a mouse's ears, then is the time to put the seed in the ground."
The tree was allowed to stand, and flourished, in spite of a large hole near the base of its trunk.
When the candles had been blown out in the Assembly Hall Captain Wadsworth had seized the charter and stolen away with it. He knew of the oak with the hole that seemed purposely made for concealing things. There he took the charter and hid it, and neither Andross nor his men ever laid hands on it. The tree became famous in history as the Charter Oak.
As long as James II was king of England Andross and other despotic governors like him had their way in the colonies. But when James was driven from his throne by William, the Prince of Orange, conditions changed. William sent a messenger with a statement of his new plans for the government of New England, and when the messenger reached Boston he was welcomed with open arms. Andross, however, had the man arrested and thrown into jail. Then on April 18, 1689, the people of Boston and the neighboring towns rose in rebellion, drove Andross and his fellows from their seats in the government and put back the old officers they had had before. They thought that William III would treat them more justly than James II had done, and they were not disappointed.
Already, in their protection of the regicides and in their saving of their charter, the people of Connecticut had shown that love of liberty that was to burst forth more bravely than ever in the days of the Revolution.