SETTLEMENT OF LONDONDERRY.

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that west of the same river. He gave it the name of New Hampshire in remembrance of the English county of Hampshire which had once been his home.

every log-cabin the hum of the housewife's little flax-wheel made cheerful and profitable music for the family.

One of the descendants of an industrious Scotch settler of this class, but who came at an earlier period, was the eminent orator, patriot, and statesman, Daniel Webster.1

In 1641 New Hampshire, dreading Indian hostilities, and having but a small and scattered population, petitioned for union with

1 New Hampshire and New York both claimed the territory of Vermont. New York did not give up her claim until after the Revolution.

2 See Paragraph 81.

3 Londonderry: the name was given to the settlement by the Scotch Presbyterian emigrants who came from Londonderry and vicinity, in the north of Ireland. A desire to build up an independent community induced the emigrants to come to this country.

4 Mr. Webster was born in 1782, in Salisbury, N.H., about fifty miles northwest of Portsmouth. He once said, in a public speech: "It did not happen to me to be born in a log-cabin; but my elder brothers and sisters were born in a logcabin, reared amid the snow-drifts of New Hampshire at a period so early that when the smoke first rose from its rude chimney and curled over the frozen hills, there was no similar evidence of a white man's habitation between it and the settlements on the rivers of Canada."

Massachusetts. The petition was granted. Furthermore, the citizens of New Hampshire, in accordance with their request, were permitted to vote and hold office without first having to prove that they were church-members, as in Massachusetts.1

In 1679 New Hampshire became a royal province,2 and remained so until the Revolution.

95. Summary.-New Hampshire originally formed part of the region called Maine or the Mainland. English colonists settled Dover and Portsmouth. Emigrants from Massachusetts, and Scotch-Irish, later foun led the towns of Exeter and Londonderry. The Scotch-Irish set up the manufacture of linen. Eventually New Hampshire was united with Massachusetts and then became a province of the king.

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3

VI. CONNECTICUT (1634).

96. Emigration to the Valley of the Connecticut; Hooker's Colony. The rich lands of the beautiful valley of the Connecticut River early attracted the Dutch of New Amsterdam and the settlers of Plymouth. Both made an attempt to get a foothold on the coveted territory. But emigration did not begin in earnest until 1635. Then a number of settlements were made, which later united under one government. We shall now take up the history of these separate colonies.

1. In 1635 emigrants from the vicinity of Boston founded the towns of Wethersfield and Windsor. 2. In the autumn of that year an English company which held a grant of the territory sent out John Winthrop, son of Governor Winthrop of Boston with the title of "Governor of the River of Connecticut." He built a fort at Saybrook, at the mouth of the river, and thus effectually shut out the Dutch from that quarter.

1 See Paragraph 80.

2 See Paragraph 90.

3 Connecticut, an indian word, meaning, as is supposed, The Long River.

4 See Paragraph 64, page 71.

5

Saybrook: named in honor of Lords Say and Brook, the two chief proprietors of the company.

THE CONNECTICUT CONSTITUTION.

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3. The next June (1636) the third movement of emigration set in. The Rev. Thomas Hooker of Newtown, now Cambridge, Massachusetts, started with a company of one hundred men, women, and children for what was then called "the West." They travelled on foot, driving a hundred and sixty head of cattle, besides hogs, through the wilderness. There were neither roads nor bridges, and the emigrants had to find their way by the compass, crossing rivers on rafts, sleeping under the stars, and living mainly on the milk of their cows.

After a journey of two weeks through a country which expresstrains now cross in three hours, they reached Hartford, where a small settlement of English had already been made.

97. The Pequot War. The next spring (1637) a legislative assembly met at Hartford, and resolved to make war on the Pequot1 Indians, who threatened to destroy the white settlers. The three towns of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor contributed ninety men led by Captain John Mason. The night before the expedition started was spent in prayer. The Pequots had a fortified village near the present town of Mystic. The little army, accompanied by Indians of tribes hostile to the Pequots, and with some help from Massachusetts, attacked the enemy in their stronghold, and, setting fire to their wigwams, literally burned them out. The blow was a terrible one to the Pequots. From that time they were hunted down like wild beasts, until in a few months the tribe was practically destroyed.

98. The Connecticut Constitution. In 1639 the people of the three towns of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor met at Hartford, and drew up the first written constitution or form of

1 See Paragraph 81, page 86.

2

2 Constitution: For the same reason that a game of ball cannot be played successfully without some rules to govern it, so, whenever a number of people join to form a community or a state, they must have some form of agreement or principle of union. Such an agreement is a constitution of government. Its object is to secure individual liberty on the one hand, and order on the other. The advantage of having such an agreement in writing is that it can be readily consulted; and

66

" 1

government "known in history." In the words of that document, its object was to maintain the peace and union" of the people of the colony.

One remarkable fact about that compact is that it made no mention either of the king of England or of the English company which held a royal grant of the Connecticut lands. It was in reality the constitution of a republic; and the men who framed it refused to bow to any authority outside or above themselves, except that of their Maker.

One reason why many of the Connecticut emigrants had left Massachusetts was that they did not believe in the principle of limiting the right of voting to church-members.2 The Hartford constitution imposed no such restriction, every citizen was politically equal with every other, and there was nothing to hinder his taking part in making the laws. To-day not only the United States but every State in the Union has a written constitution safeguard of liberty- similar in that respect to the one drafted at Hartford in 1639. That, then, may be called the parent of all that have followed.

a

99. The New Haven Colony; Scripture Laws. There were now two colonies in the territory: First, that at Saybrook,3

misunderstandings and disputes about its meaning and application are less likely to occur than if it was not so preserved.

1 Johnston's Connecticut.

2 See Paragraph 80.

3 Saybrook this settlement remained an independent colony until 1644, when it was united with the colony of Connecticut,

THE FUGITIVE REGICIDES.

99

people who had arrived at Boston from London the year before. One of its leading men was the Rev. John Davenport, a Puritan minister. The spring after they formed the settlement (1639) all the colonists met in a large barn to listen to a sermon from Mr. Davenport, and draw up rules for the government of the new community. What those rules were we can guess from the old verse which tells us how

"They in Newman's barn laid down

Scripture foundations for the town."

Those "Scripture foundations,” a few years later, made the severe Jewish laws of the Old Testament1 those of New Haven. None could vote or hold any public office but members of the church. It was practically the same kind of government as that of Massachusetts.

100. The Fugitive Regicides; Andros and the Connecticut Charter.-These stern New Haven colonists believed heartily in justice, and hated royal oppression. In 1663 Whalley and Goffe, two of the judges then known as "regicides," because, during the English Civil War (1649), they had voted to put the tyrannical Charles I. to death, fled to New Haven.

King Charles II. sent officers to the colony to arrest them. Davenport concealed the judges, and the next Sunday preached to his congregation from a passage of the Bible containing the words, "Hide the outcasts; betray not him that wandereth."

The sermon had the effect intended, and the disappointed officers went back without capturing the regicides.3

1 In 1644" the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses," were declared to be binding. Like the laws of Massachusetts, they inflicted the penalty of death for no less than fourteen offences. They were, however, far more merciful than the laws of England, which at a very much later period made upwards of two hundred crimes punishable with death-sheep-stealing being one.

2 Isaiah xvi. 3-4.

3 According to tradition, Goffe saved the town of Hadley, Mass. (where he was living concealed in 1675), in an Indian attack during King Philip's War. The savages were on the point of gaining the day, when a venerable man with a long white beard suddenly appeared, rallied the inhabitants, and drove off the assailants, He then disappeared. Some thought they owed their victory to an angel.