The story of John Winthrop’s second arrival from England, in October, 1635, with a commission from Lord Say and Sele, and Lord Brook and others, and with £2,000 in money, to begin an independent settlement and erect a fortification near the mouth of the Connecticut River, and to be governor there for one year, is told in Winthrop’s Journal (i. 170, 173); and is repeated in full by Trumbull, vol. i. Possession was taken in the following month. The patent to Lord Say and others, which was the basis of this movement, is known as the “old patent of Connecticut,” and may be seen, with Winthrop’s commission, in Trumbull’s History, vol. i., both editions. It purports to be a personal grant from the Earl of Warwick, then the President of the Council for New England, bearing date March 19, 1631 (1632 N.S.). Although the authority by which the grant is made is not given in the document itself, as is usually the case, it has been confidently asserted that the Earl of Warwick had received the previous year a patent for the same territory from the Council for New England, which was subsequently confirmed by the King.[655] The grant was interpreted to convey all the territory lying west of the Narragansett River, one hundred and twenty miles on the Sound, thence onward to the South Sea.[656]
The first and second agreements with Fenwick, the agent of the proprietors, dated Dec. 5, 1644, and Feb. 17, 1646, were first printed by Trumbull.[657] The account of Fenwick’s arrival in the colony, in 1639, with his family, and his settlement, and the naming of Saybrook, may be seen in Winthrop.[658]
The “Capital Laws,” established by Connecticut, Dec. 1, 1642, the first “Code of Laws,” and the court orders, judgments, and sentences of the General and Particular Courts, from 1636 to 1662, are printed in Connecticut Colonial Records.[659]
The contemporaneous accounts of the Pequot War have already been mentioned under “Massachusetts.” What relates specially to Connecticut is largely told in the Colonial Records. Mason’s narrative is by far the best of the original accounts which have been published. The dispute with Massachusetts respecting the division of the conquered territory; the allotments of the same to the soldiers; the account of the younger Winthrop’s settlement in the Pequot country, and his claim to the Nehantick country by an early gift of Sashions, not allowed by the United Colonies,—may be seen in the records of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and in the records of the United Colonies.[660]
The account of the settlement of New Haven by emigrants from Massachusetts—indirectly from the city of London,—in 1638; of their purchases of lands from the natives, and of the formation of their government,—church and civil,—may be seen in Winthrop,[661] and in New Haven Colonial Records.[662]
The Fundamental Articles, or Original Constitution, of the Colony of New Haven, June 4, 1639, which continued in force till 1665, was printed in Trumbull’s History, vol. i., in 1797, in Appendix, no. iv., as also in the later edition, and in the Colonial Records, i. 11-17, in which volume the legislative and judicial history of the colony is recorded for many years. The orders of the General Court, the civil and criminal trials before the Court of Magistrates, with the evidence spread out on the pages of the record, and the sentences following, being, in criminal cases, based on the Laws of Moses, furnish an unpleasant exhibition; perhaps not more so, however, than other primitive colonies would have shown if their record of crimes had been as well preserved. From April, 1644, to May, 1653, the Records of New Haven jurisdiction are lost.
What is known as Governor Eaton’s[663] Code of Laws was sent to London to be printed under the supervision of Governor Hopkins, who had returned to England a few years before; and an edition of five hundred copies appeared in 1656, under the title of New Haven’s Settling in New England, etc. The code was first reprinted by Mr. Royal R. Hinman, at Hartford, in 1838, in a volume entitled The Blue Laws of New Haven Colony, usually called Blue Laws of Connecticut, Quaker Laws of Plymouth and Massachusetts, etc.; and again, in 1858, at the end of the second volume of New Haven Records, from a rare copy in the Library of the American Antiquarian Society.[664] The “Articles of Confederation” of the United Colonies of 1643, whose records are a mine of history in themselves, were prefixed to this code, and were here printed for the first time. The Records were first printed by Hazard in 1794, from the Plymouth copy, and they have more recently been reprinted by the State of Massachusetts in a volume of the Plymouth Records. Each colony had a copy of those records, but the only ones preserved are those of Plymouth and of Connecticut. The latter, containing some entries wanting in the former, are printed at the end of vol. iii. of the Connecticut Colonial Records.
The Quakers gave little disturbance to either of these colonies. While the people in Connecticut were divided with the “Half-Way Covenant” controversy, the Quakers, in July, 1656, made their appearance in Boston. The United Colonies recommended the several jurisdictions to pass laws prohibiting their coming, and banishing those who should come. Connecticut and New Haven took the alarm, and acted upon the advice given. New Haven subsequently increased the penalties at first prescribed, yet falling short in severity of the legislation of Massachusetts.[665]
The territorial disputes of Connecticut and New Haven with the Dutch at Manhados, which began early and were of long continuance, find abundant illustration in Trumbull’s History of Connecticut, and in Brodhead’s History of New York, and in the documentary history, of which the materials were procured by Brodhead, but arranged by O’Callaghan.[666]