[Footnote 2: Read Fiske's Beginnings of New England, pp. 192-196. Many of the New Haven colonists were disgusted by the union of their colony with Connecticut, and in June, 1667, migrated to New Jersey, where they founded "New-Ark" or Newark.]
In 1684 the King's judges declared the Massachusetts charter void, and James II. was about to make New England one royal colony, when the English people drove him from the throne. William and Mary in 1691 granted a new charter and united the Plymouth colony, Massachusetts, Maine, and Nova Scotia, in one colony called Massachusetts Bay. This charter was in force when the Revolution opened.
SUMMARY
1. The first colony established by the Plymouth Company (1607, on the coast of Maine) was a failure.
2. Captain John Smith explored the New England coast and mapped it (1613), but did not succeed in planting any colonies.
3. The permanent settlement of New England began with the arrival of a body of Separatists in the Mayflower (1620), who founded the colony of Plymouth.
4. The Separatist migration from England was followed in a few years by a great exodus of Puritans, who planted towns along the coast to the north of Plymouth, and obtained a charter of government and a great strip of land, and founded the colony of Massachusetts Bay.
5. Religious disputes drove Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson out of Massachusetts, and led to the founding of Rhode Island (1636).
6. Other church wrangles led to an emigration from Massachusetts to the Connecticut valley, where a little confederacy of towns was created and called Connecticut.
7. Some settlers from England went to Long Island Sound and there founded four towns which, in their turn, joined in a federal union called the New Haven Colony.