“Every male shall have his hair cut round according to a cap.”[20]
Of such sort were the laws made by the people of Newhaven, previous to their incorporation with Saybrook and Hertford colonies by the charter. They consist of a vast multitude, and were very properly termed Blue Laws; i. e. bloody Laws; for they were all sanctified with excommunication, confiscation, fines, banishment, whippings, cutting off the ears, burning the tongue, and death. Europe at this day might well say the Religion of the first settlers at Newhaven was fanaticism turned mad; and did not similar laws still prevail over New-England as the common law of the country, I would have left them in silence along with Dr. Mather’s Patres conscripti, and the renowned Saints of Mr. Neal, to sleep to the end of time. No one, but a partial and blind bigot, can pretend to say the projectors of them were men of Grace, Justice, and Liberty, when nothing but murders, plunders, and persecutions, mark their steps. The best apology that can be made for them is, (I write in reference to those times,) that human nature is every-where the same; and that the mitred Lord and canting Puritan are both equally dangerous, or that both agree in the unchristian doctrine of persecution, and contend only which shall put it in practice. Mr. Neal says many call the first Colonizers in New-England weak men for separating from the Church of England, and suffering persecutions, rather than comply with indifferent ceremonies; and, after asserting that they were men of great learning
and goodness, he appeals to the world to judge, which were weak, the Bishops or the Puritans? My answer is, that those Puritans were weak men in Old England, and strong in New England, where they out-pop’d the Pope, out-king’d the King, and out-bishop’d the Bishops. Their murders and persecutions prove their strength lay in weakness, and their religion in ambition, wealth, and dominion.
Notwithstanding the perpetual jealousy and discordance between the three colonies of Connecticut, (Saybrook claiming the whole under the Lords Say and Brook, Hertford under Jehovah and Conquest, and Newhaven under King Jesus and Conquest,) they judged it necessary, for their better security against the Dutch and Indians, to strengthen each other’s hands by forming a general confederacy with the Colonies of New Plymouth and the Massachusets-Bay. A measure of this kind, which they formally entered into in 1643, proved of the most salutary consequence, in a war which many years after broke out between them and Philip, sachem of the Pokanoket Indians, and which, for some time, imminently endangered the Colonies, but at length terminated in the destruction of that noted warrior and his followers.
The death of Cromwell in 1658 struck an awe throughout all New-England. Hertford and Newhaven appointed their days of fasting and prayer. Davenport prayed “the Lord to take the New-England Vine under his immediate care, as he had removed by death the great Protector of the protestant liberty:” nevertheless he lived to see the time when Charles II. obtained the possession of his Father’s crown and kingdom,
in spite of all his prayers. However, in the midst of sorrows, they were comforted by the presence of many regicides and refugees, who fled from England not so much for religion as for liberty; among whom were Whalley, Goffe, and Dixwell,[21] three of the judges and murderers of Charles I. Davenport and Leet the then Governor received them as Angels from Heaven, and blessed God that they had escaped out of the hands of “Herod the son of Barabbas.”[22]
Newhaven Dominion being thus suddenly filled with inhabitants, saw itself enabled to support its independence, and as usual despised Hertford and Saybrook, and withal paid no attention to the King and
Parliament of England.—The People of Massachusets, who were ever forward in promoting their own consequence, observing the temper and conduct of those of Newhaven, conceived an idea at once of exalting an individual
of their own province, and of attaching Hertford and Saybrook to their interest for ever. They sent Mr. John Winthrop privately to Hertford, to promote a petition to Charles II. for a charter, as a security
against the ambition of Newhaven.—The Bostonians boasted of having had the honour of settling Hertford, which they therefore professed to consider in the light of a near and dear connection. The proposal was