History of the United States, Volume 1Andrews, Elisha Benjamin
History
History of the United States, Volume 1
Andrews, Elisha Benjamin
United States -- History
Some friends of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson established a colony on Aquidneck,
the Indian name for Rhode Island. Williams went to England and secured
from Parliament a patent which united that plantation with his in one
government. Charles II.'s charter of 1663 added Warwick to the first two
settlements, renewing and enlarging the patent, and giving freest scope
for government according to Williams' ideas. Mrs. Hutchinson, a woman of
rare intellect and eloquence, who maintained the right of private
judgment and pretended to an infallible inner light of revelation, was,
like Williams, a victim of Puritan intolerance. She and her followers
were banished, and some of them, returning, put to death, 1659-60. She
came to Providence, then went to Aquidneck, where her husband died in
1642. She next settled near Hurl Gate, within the Dutch limits, where
herself and almost her entire family were butchered by the Indians in
1643.
In 1633 the Dutch erected a fort where Hartford now is, but some English
emigrants from Plymouth Colony, in defiance of a threatened cannonade,
sailed past and built a trading-house at Windsor, where, joined by
colonists, from about Boston, they soon effected a settlement.
Wethersfield and Hartford were presently founded. In 1630 the Plymouth
Company had granted Connecticut to the Earl of Warwick, who turned it
over to Lord Brooke, Lord Say-and-Seal, and others. Winthrop the
Younger, son of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, commissioned by
these last, built a fort at Saybrook. Till the expiration of his
commission the towns immediately upon the Connecticut were under the
government of Massachusetts. Their population in 1643 was three
thousand. A convention of these towns met at Hartford, January 14, 1639,
and formed a constitution, like that of Massachusetts Bay, thoroughly
republican in nature. Connecticut breathed a freer spirit than either
Massachusetts or New Haven, being in this respect the peer of Plymouth.
At Hartford Roger Williams was always welcome.
Meantime, in 1638, having touched at Boston the year before, Davenport,
Eaton, and others from London began planting at New Haven. The Bible was
adopted as their guide in both civil and religious affairs, and a
government organized in which only church members could vote or be
elected to the General Court. The colony flourished, branching out into
several towns. In 1643 it numbered twenty five hundred inhabitants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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