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 2 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.

8 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.

Charles II., who was not unfriendly to the colony, had granted to the Connecticut people a charter confirming their right of selfgovernment. By that charter the territory was extended westward to the Pacific, or one-eighth the circumference of the globe, though no one then had any idea of the actual width of the continent. Saybrook had already been united with Connecticut, and New Haven was now joined to it. When James II. came to the throne he determined to take away the charters of Connecticut and Rhode Island as his brother, Charles II., had done in the case of Massachusetts. His object was to bring them directly under his despotic control. Sir Edmund Andros1 was made governor of New England, and demanded the surrender of the Connecticut charter. In 1687 he went with a body of troops to Hartford to get it.

The Connecticut people looked upon that document as the titledeed of their liberties, and were resolved never to give it up.

Andros met the legislature, and discussed the matter until evening. At his order, the precious charter was at last brought in, in a box, and placed on the table. Then, according to tradition, the candles were suddenly blown out, and when they were relighted the charter had disappeared. It is said to have been hidden in a hollow oak not far off, which was ever after known as the Charter Oak.2

4

Andros, however, declared that the colony should no longer be governed under the charter, and, to show that the end had come, he ordered the clerk to write "Finis "3 at the close of the record of the meeting. When the people of Boston compelled Andros to give up the power he had abused, the charter was produced, and Connecticut maintained her government under it not only until the Revolution, but for many years afterward (1818).

1 See Paragraph 90.

2 The famous Charter Oak stood in what is now Charter Oak Place, Hartford, It was blown down in 1856. The spot is marked by a marble tablet.

3 Finis: a Latin word (the end), formerly put at the end of books. 4 See Paragraph 90.

THE CATHOLIC PILGRIMS.

101. Summary. Connecticut was settled chiefly by emigrants from Eastern Massachusetts and from England. It was the first colony in America to frame a written constitution of government one which gave the right of voting to every citizen. The king granted the colony a charter confirming their power of governing themselves. Governor Andros, by the order of James II., tried to get possession of the charter but failed. Except for a very short period, Connecticut practically continued to maintain her own laws.

Fau

102. The Catholic Pilgrims; Lord Baltimore; Maryland. We have seen how a band of Protestant Pilgrims1 settled Plymouth in 1620; fourteen years later (1634) a company of Catholic Pilgrims came to America for a like reason - that they might build up a state where they could worship God without molestation.2

George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, a Catholic nobleman of excellent ability and high standing, resolved to provide a refuge in the New World for the persecuted people of his faith. From his friend King Charles I. he obtained the promise of a grant of land in Northern Virginia. Lord Baltimore died before the charter was completed, but his son, Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore, received the grant. It made him practically all but king over a territory north of the Potomac, to which Charles I. gave the name of Maryland, in honor of his queen, who was herself a Catholic.3

1 See Paragraph 71.

2 The English law imposed the ruinous fine of twenty pounds a month -a sum equal to not less than $700 to $800 now-on every Catholic who refused to attend the services of the Church of England. This law was not always strictly enforced, but large sums were frequently extorted by the government from the Catholics by way of compromise.

8 Henriette-Marie of France, commonly called Henrietta Maria. The charter gave the territory the Latin name of Terra Mariæ, or Mary's Land (Marie, the queen's name meaning the same as Mary in English). Maryland included not only the present State, but also Delaware and part of Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Baltimore
1729

St.Mary 1634

103. The Settlement of St. Mary's; the Wigwam Church. In the spring of 1634 a colony of about three hundred persons led by Governor Leonard Calvert, a younger brother of the second Lord Baltimore, -landed on the northern bank of the Potomac, near its mouth, and founded the town of St. Mary's.1 About twenty of the colonists were gentlemen of wealth and standing, most of them probably Catholics the rest of the emigrants were laborers, and seem to have been chiefly Protestants. Father White, a priest who accompanied the expedition, had no sooner landed than he got permission from an Indian chief to convert his wigwam into a chapel. This hut was the first English Catholic church in America. Virginia would not have permitted that church to stand; New England would not. It was only in the wilderness of Maryland, in that mixed population of Catholics and Protestants, that it was safe.

Jamestow 1607

I C

ROANOKE

7

1585-87

CROATOAN

104. Political and Religious Freedom of the Colony.— From the beginning all the colonists took part in making the laws by which they were governed, and in a few years Lord Baltimore granted them the power of originating those laws. In religion absolute freedom of worship was given to all Christians, but to

3

1 St. Mary's: this name was probably given because the colonists had celebrated a festival (the Annunciation) of the Virgin Mary two days before.

2 Father White was the historian of the expedition, and has given us the first account of the settlement.

8 It is true that Lord Baltimore, holding his charter, as he did, from the Protestant sovereign of a Protestant nation, could not have safely denied liberty of worship to Protestants; but it is also true that he evidently had no desire in his heart to deny such liberty. The fact that he invited Puritans into the colony and protected them from persecution, shows the man's true spirit.

THE CLAYBORNE AND INGLE REBELLION.

103

Christians only. No other colony in this country then enjoyed such liberty, and it was wholly unknown in Europe.1

The result was that Maryland became a refuge not only for the oppressed Catholics of England, but also for many of the oppressed Protestants of the other colonies of America. Puritans driven out of Virginia, Quakers exiled from Massachusetts, both came to Maryland and found homes there, and in 1649 a Puritan settlement was formed at Providence, since named Annapolis.2

3

105. The Clayborne and Ingle Rebellion; Lord Baltimore's Government overthrown; Persecution of the Catholics. The colony, however, was not to enjoy the peace for which it hoped. Before Lord Baltimore received his charter, William Clayborne, an influential Virginian, had established a thriving settlement and trading-post on Kent Island, in Chesapeake Bay. He refused to recognize the authority of Governor Calvert and endeavored to hold the island by force, but was driven out. When the Civil War broke out in England, the colonists of Maryland, like the people of Great Britain, took sides for or against the king.

Taking advantage of this division, Clayborne stirred up a rebellion (1645), and kept the whole country in a turmoil for two or three years. Captain Ingle, who asserted that he acted under the authority of the Puritan Parliament of England, but who was practically a pirate, got possession of St. Mary's. He plundered it, and seizing "the venerable Father White," sent him to England in irons on a groundless charge of treason against the Parliament of that country.

But worse was to come. After the king was dethroned and

1 This liberty was confirmed by a law enacted in 1649, which declared that no person professing belief in Jesus Christ shall be "in any ways troubled, molested, or discountenanced, for or in respect of his or her religion, nor in the free exercise thereof." This law did not protect those who denied the doctrine of the Trinity. 2 From Queen Anne of England.

3 For carrying on the fur trade with the Indians. 4 See Paragraph 55, page 61.