The town of New Haven was soon noted for its large and fine houses, Eaton's having nineteen fireplaces according to tradition, and Davenport's, thirteen. But at first any kind of shelter was used for protection. The people met under an oak tree for service on the first Sunday after landing and Reverend John Davenport preached a sermon to them on the "Temptation of the Wilderness," so it is said. During the first winter some of them slept in cellars dug out in the banks of one of the creeks and covered with earth. A boy named Michael Wigglesworth, who came to New Haven with his parents in October, 1638, when he was nine years old, lived in one of these cellars. When he grew up he wrote his autobiography and in it he says, "I remember that one great rain brake in upon us and drenched me so in my bed, being asleep, that I fell sick upon it, but the Lord in mercy spared my life and restored my health." When the settlers at Quinnipiac, or New Haven, as it was soon called, had been there a little more than a year, they met in Robert Newman's barn "to consult about settling civil government" and also about establishing a church. Up to this time they had lived under what was known as the "Plantation Covenant," which was a simple agreement among themselves that they would all "be ordered by those rules which the Scripture holds forth." At this meeting on June 4, l639, they decided that they would continue to accept the Bible as a code of laws, and that only church members should hold office or have the right to vote for magistrates. They did this under the direction of John Davenport, who in one of his writings had described this colony as "a new Plantation whose design is religion." This agreement, made in Robert Newman's barn, was known as the "Fundamental Agreement." Twelve men were appointed on that day who chose seven from among themselves to found a church. These seven men were called the "Seven Pillars." On August 22, the "Seven Pillars" met and established a church, and on the 25th of October they met again and set up the civil government. [Illustration: MEDAL COMMEMORATING THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FOUNDING OF NEW HAVEN.] Like the Connecticut Colony, the New Haven Colony in setting up its government made no reference to any authority beyond itself; the people elected their own magistrates and made their own laws. But the New Haven Colony was unlike Connecticut in one important respect. In New Haven no man could vote or hold a place in the government unless he was a church member. This led later to much discontent among some of the people, and was one reason, among others, for the failure of New Haven as a separate colony and for its beng absorbed, twenty-five years afterward,--in 1664,--into the larger and more liberal Connecticut Colony.