New Haven and Branford were more fixed and obstinate in their opposition to an incorporation with Connecticut than any of the other towns in that colony. Mr. Davenport and Mr. Pierson seem to have been among its chief supporters. They, with many of the inhabitants of the colony, were more rigid with respect to the terms of church-communion than the ministers and churches of Connecticut generally were. A considerable number of the churches in Connecticut were in favor of the propositions of the General Council, which met at Cambridge in 1662, relative to baptism of children whose parents were not in full communion. The ministers and churches of New Haven were universally and utterly against them. Mr. Davenport, and others in this colony, were also strong in the opinion that all government should be in the Church. No person in the colony could be a freeman unless he was a member in full communion. But, in Connecticut, all orderly persons possessing a freehold to a certain amount might be made free of the corporation. Those gentlemen who were so strong in their opposition were jealous that a union would mar the purity, order, and beauty of their churches, and have an influence on the civil administrations. Besides, it was a painful reflection that, after they had been at so much pains and expense to form and support themselves as a distinct government, and had been many years owned as one, their existence must cease and their name be obliterated. Milford at this time broke off from them, and would no more either send magistrates or deputies to the General Court. Mr. Richard Law, a principal gentleman in Stamford, also deserted them. In this state of affairs the General Assembly of Connecticut convened on the 13th of October. This was an important crisis with the colony. Their liberties were not only in equal danger with those of the sister-colonies, from the extraordinary powers and arbitrary dispositions and measures of the king’s commissioners, but the Duke of York, a powerful antagonist, had received a patent covering Long Island and all that part of the colony west of Connecticut River. William and Anne, the Duke and Duchess of Hamilton, had petitioned his Majesty to restore to them the tract of country granted to their father, James, Marquis of Hamilton, in the year 1635; and his Majesty had, on the 6th of May, 1664, referred the case to the determination of Colonel Nichols and the other commissioners. Besides, the state of affairs with New Haven was neither comfortable nor safe.