CHAPTER VI.
THE CHARTER OAK.
When time, who steals our years away
Shall steal our pleasures too,
The memory of the past will stay,
And half our joys renew.
—Moore.
The Stevens family was growing with the colonies. Of the descendants of Mathew Stevens who came to New Plymouth in the Mayflower, there were many living in Boston, New York, Salem, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The family, widely scattered as its members were, never lost track of each other. They knew all their relatives in Virginia, Maryland and Carolinia.
Charles Stevens, but a youth, was on a visit to Connecticut, when an event transpired, which has since become historical. An aunt of Charles Stevens was the wife of a certain Captain Wadsworth, and Charles was visiting at this aunt's house when the incident happened.
As the student of American history doubtless knows, the tyrannical Governor Andros of New York, claimed dominion over all that scope of country denominated as the New Netherland, a very indefinite term applied to a great scope of country extending from Maryland to the Connecticut River, to which point Andros claimed jurisdiction.
As early as 1675, he went to the mouth of the Connecticut River with a small naval force, to assert his authority. Captain Bull, the commander of a small garrison at Saybrook, permitted him to land; but when the governor began to read his commission, Bull ordered him to be silent. Andros was compelled to yield to the bold spirit and superior military power of Captain Bull, and in a towering passion he returned to New York, flinging curses and threats behind him at the people of Connecticut in general and Captain Bull in particular.
More than a dozen years had passed since Andros had been humiliated by Connecticut, and, despite his anathemas, the colony quietly pursued the even tenor of its way. At the end of that period, a most exciting incident occurred at Hartford, during the visit of Charles Stevens to that city. This historical incident has about it all the rosy hues of romance. On the very day of the arrival of Charles Stevens at Hartford, while he was talking with Captain Wadsworth, his aunt's husband, a member of the colonial assembly suddenly entered the house, his face flushed with excitement.
"What has happened, Mr. Prince?" Wadsworth asked, for he could see that the man was greatly excited.
"Governor Andros has come again," gasped Mr. Prince.