Peace being established, and prosperity prevailing through the infant settlements of Connecticut, the first act of the year 1639 was to form themselves into a body-politic and frame a constitution. “This constitution,” says Bancroft, “was of unexampled liberality.” The elective franchise belonged to all the members of the towns who had taken the oath of allegiance to the commonwealth, irrespective of church membership, which was only insisted upon in the case of the governor. The magistrates and legislature were chosen annually by ballot, and the representatives were proportioned to the amount of population. So wise and judicious was the constitution then framed, that, spite of the advance which the human mind and the social condition have made since then, there has been no reason found to alter materially the frame of government then formed. No jurisdiction of England or the English monarch was acknowledged; it was a simple body-politic, formed by voluntary association; the principle of which was, “to maintain the purity of the gospel, the discipline of the churches, and in all civil affairs to be governed by the constitution which should be adopted.” The legislators of Connecticut were Hooker and Haynes. A second puritan colony had already sprung up in Connecticut, equally independent with that of Hartford. In 1637, two friends, “the Moses and Aaron of New Haven,” as they have been called, with a number of puritan associates all of the strictly Calvinistic form, arrived at Boston. These were Theophilus Eaton and John Davenport; the former a man of wealth, who had been English ambassador in Denmark, and son-in-law to the Bishop of Chester; the latter, an eminent minister of London. Davenport, a friend of Cotton, who had already emigrated to Massachusetts, and who had by him been converted to puritanism, believing that the Reformation in England had only half accomplished its purpose, and that “it was impossible to reform an imperfect reformation,” earnestly desired to establish a perfectly organised church. When Cotton, therefore, wrote to him from New England that the order there established “brought to his mind the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,” he resolved also to remove to the New World, where an opportunity might be afforded him of accomplishing his long-desired purpose.