This was the original fundamental Constitution of the government of New Haven. All government was originally in the church, and the members of the church elected the Governor, magistrates, and other officers. The magistrates at first were no more than assistants of the Governor; they might not act in any sentence or determination of the Court.
No Deputy-Governor was chosen, nor were any laws enacted, except the general resolutions which have been noticed; but as the plantation enlarged, and new towns were settled, new orders were given; the General Court received a new form, laws were enacted, and the civil polity of this jurisdiction gradually advanced, in its essential parts, to a near resemblance of the government of Connecticut.
Upon these resolutions were based the “Blue Laws” which will appear in the work.—Ed. Note.
[16] William, Thomas, and Hugh Peters were brothers, and born in Fowery, in Cornwall, in Old England. Their father was a merchant of great property, and their mother was Elizabeth Treffry, daughter of John Treffry, Esq., of a very ancient and opulent family in Fowery. William was educated at Leyden, Thomas at Oxford, and Hugh at Cambridge Universities. About the year 1610 and 1620, Thomas and Hugh were clergymen in London, and William was a private gentleman. About 1628 Thomas and Hugh, rendered obnoxious by their popularity and Puritanism, were silenced by the Bishop of London. They then went to Holland, and remained there till 1633, when they returned to London. The three brothers sold their landed property, and went to New-England in 1634. Hugh settled at Salem, and became too popular for Mather and Cotton. He was soon appointed one of the Trustees of the College at New-Cambridge. He built a grand house, and purchased a large tract of land.—The yard before his house he paved with flint-stones from England; and, having dug a well, he paved that round with flint-stones also, for the accommodation of every inhabitant in want of water. It bears the name of Peters’s Spring to this day.—He married a second wife, by whom he had one daughter named Elizabeth. The renown of this zealot increasing, he received an invitation to remove from Salem to Boston, and, complying with it, he there laid the foundation-stone of the great Meeting-House, of which the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper, one of the most learned of the Literati in America, is the present minister. Mather and Cotton ill brooked being out-rivalled by Hugh; yet, finding him an orthodox fanatic, and more perfect than themselves, they seemingly bowed to his superiority, at the same time that they laid a snare for his destruction. In 1641 those envious pastors conspired with the Court at Boston to convert their Bishop Hugh into a Politician, and appoint him agent to Great Britain.—The Plot succeeded; and Hugh assumed his agency under colour of petitioning for some abatement of customs and excise; but his real commission was to foment the civil discontents, jars, and wars, then prevailing between the King and Parliament.—Hugh did not see into the policy of Mather and Cotton; and he had a strong inclination to chastise the Bishops and Court, who had turned him out of the Church for his fanatical conduct. On his arrival in London, the Parliament took him into their service.—The Earls of Warwick and Essex were also his patrons.—In 1644, the Parliament gave him Archbishop Laud’s library; and soon after made him Head of the Archbishop’s Court, and gave him his estate and palace at Lambeth:—all of which Hugh kept till the Restoration, when he paid for his zeal, his puritanism, and rebellion, on a gibbet at Charing-Cross.—His daughter married a merchant in Newport, Rhode-Island, and lived and died with an excellent character.—Her Father having met with so tragical an end, I omit to mention her Husband’s name, whose Posterity live in good reputation.—Governor Hutchinson reports, that the widow of Hugh Peters was supported, till 1671, by a collection at Salem, of 30l. per ann. Were this report true, it would be much to the reputation of Salem for having once relieved the unfortunate. Mr. Hutchinson might have pointed out the cause of the unhappy widow’s necessity; but he has left that part to me, and here it follows:—After Hugh’s Death, the selectmen of Salem were afraid that the King [Charles II.] would seize on his estate in Salem, as had been the case in regard to what the Parliament had given him in England. They therefore trumped up a debt, and seized and sold the said estate to the families of Lyndes and Curwin, who possess it to the present time;—and the selectmen of Salem allowed the widow 30l. per ann. for the wrong they had done her and her daughter. It is not likely that the widow was supported by any charitable collection; for William Peters was a man of great property, and had a deed of the whole peninsula whereon Boston stands, which he purchased of Mr. Blaxton, who bought it of the Plymouth Company; though Mr. Hutchinson says Blaxton’s title arose merely from his sleeping on it the first of any Englishman.[17]—This was well said by Mr. Hutchinson, who wanted to justify the people of Salem in seizing the land and expelling Mr. Blaxton from his settlement in 1630, because he said he liked Lords-Brethren less than Lords-Bishops.—Moreover, Thomas Peters, at the same time, was living at Saybrook, and was not poor.—Those two Gentlemen were able and willing to support the widow of an unfortunate brother whom they loved very tenderly.—They took great care of his daughter, and left her handsome legacies.—From these considerations, I am induced to believe, that the widow of Hugh Peters never subsisted on any contributions, except what she received from her brothers William and Thomas Peters.—Mr. Hutchinson makes a curious remark, viz., If Hugh Peters had returned to his parish, he would not have suffered as he did.—He might have said, with greater propriety, that, if Hugh Peters had not been a fanatic and a rebel more zealous than wise, he never would have left his Parish for the agency of the people of New-England, who never paid him the stipulated allowance for his support in England, tho’ he gave them thanksgiving-days, instead of fasting, for the space of twenty years, and procured, in 1649, from Oliver Cromwell, a charter for the Company for propagating the Gospel in New-England, which, by contributions raised in England, have supported all the missionaries among the Indians to the present time;—yet Mr. Hutchinson and Neal write largely about the vast expense the Massachusets-Bay have been at in spreading the Gospel among the poor savages!
I cannot forbear here to notice an abuse of this charter. Notwithstanding it confines the views of the Company to New-England, yet they, and their Committee of Correspondence in Boston, have of late years vouchsafed to send most of their Missionaries out of New-England, among the Six Nations, and the unsanctified episcopalians in the Southern Colonies, where was a competent number of church clergymen. Whenever this work of supererogation has met with its deserved animadversion, their answer has been, that, though Cromwell limited them to New-England, yet Christ had extended their bounds from sea to sea! With what little reason do they complain of King William’s charter to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts? This Society have sent Missionaries to New-England, where they have an undoubted right to send them, to supply episcopal Churches already established there; whereas the other Society send Missionaries beyond the limits of their charter, to alienate the minds of the episcopal Indians of the Six Nations, against the episcopal Missionaries and the Government of the Mother-Country.—And they have been too successful; especially since the Rev. Dr. Eleazer Wheelock, Dr. Whitaker, and the Rev. Mr. Sampson Occom, by the Charity of England, have joined in the same work.—To the General Assembly, and the Consociation of Connecticut, Dr. Wheelock and his associates are much beholden for their success in converting the poor benighted savages in the howling wilderness. Their merits are great, and their reward is pending.—Ed. Note.
[17] “The Rev. Mr. Blaxton had lived on Shawmut, or the peninsula on which Boston is built, above nine years before June, 1630, when he was driven away from his possessions by the pious people of Salem, because he was not pleased with the religious system of those new-comers.—They were so generous as to vote a small lot to Mr. Blaxton, near Boston-Neck, as a compensation for the whole peninsula, and for his banishment on pain of death not to return.—Blaxton afterwards sold his right to William Peters, Esq. but who was kept out of possession of it by the supreme power of the People.—”
[18] As tobacco about this time was coming into use in the colony, a very curious law was made for its regulation or suppression. It was ordered that no person under twenty years of age, nor any other who had not already accustomed himself to the use of it, should take any tobacco until he had obtained a certificate, from under the hand of an approved physician, that it was useful for him, and until he had also obtained a license from the Court. All others who had addicted themselves to the use of it were prohibited from taking it in any company, or at their labors, or in traveling, unless ten miles at least from any company; and, though not in company, not more than once a day, upon pain of a fine of a sixpence for every offense. One substantial witness was to be sufficient proof of the crime.
The constables of the several towns were to make presentment to the particular Courts, and it was ordered that the fine should be paid without gainsaying.—Ed. Note.
[19] The Savage Pawawwers, or Priests, never concern themselves with marriages, but leave them to the Paniesh, or Magistrates.
[20] The Levitical law forbids cutting the hair, or rounding the head.