The strong tribes which held sway in the forests of South Carolina,—the Yamassees, Creeks, Catawbas, and Cherokees,—were no kinsmen of these alien Iroquois out of the north, and had willingly lent their aid to the English to destroy them. But, the war over, the Spaniards busied themselves to win these tribes also to a conspiracy against the English settlements, and succeeded only too well. They joined in a great confederacy, and put their seven or eight thousand braves on the war-path to destroy the English. For almost a whole year (April, 1715, to February, 1716) they kept to their savage work unsubdued, until full four hundred whites had lost their lives at their hands. Then the final reckoning came for them also, and the shattered remnants of their tribes sought new homes for themselves as they could. The savages had all but accomplished their design against the settlements. The awful work of destroying them left the Carolinas upon the verge of utter exhaustion, drained of blood and money, almost without crops of food to subsist upon, quite without means to bear the heavy charges of government in a time of war and sore disorder. There were some among the disheartened settlers who thought of abandoning their homes there altogether and seeking a place where peace might be had at a less terrible cost. But there was peace at least, and the danger of absolute destruction had passed. New York had had her own fright while the war lasted. A house blazed in the night (1712), and certain negroes who had gathered about it killed some of those who came to extinguish the flames. It was rumored that there had been a plot among the negroes to put the whole of the town to the torch; an investigation was made, amidst a general panic which rendered calm inquiry into such a matter impossible; and nineteen blacks were executed. But in most of the colonies domestic affairs had gone quietly enough, the slow war disturbing them very little. Connecticut found leisure of thought enough, in 1708, to collect a synod at Saybrook and formulate a carefully considered constitution for her churches, which her legislature the same year adopted. In 1707 New York witnessed a notable trial which established the freedom of dissenting pulpits. Lord Cornbury, the profligate governor of the province, tried to silence the Rev. Francis Mackemie, a Presbyterian minister,—pretending that the English laws of worship and doctrine were in force in New York; but a jury made short work of acquitting him. Massachusetts endured Joseph Dudley as governor throughout the war (1702-1715), checking him very pertinaciously at times when he needed the assistance of her General Court, but no longer refusing to live with reasonable patience under governors not of her own choosing. [Illustration: NEW YORK, FROM THE HARBOR, ABOUT 1725] [Illustration: ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD]