4. Stiles, Ezra. _A History of Three of the Judges of King Charles First_. Hartford, 1794 Reprinted in _Library of American History_, Samuel L. Knapp, editor. New York, 1839. 5. Goffe's Diary, in _Proceedings_ of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1863-64. 6. Judd, Sylvester. _History of Hadley_. Introduction to edition of 1905. H.R. Huntting & Co. Springfield, 1905. THE FORT ON THE RIVER A boy named Lion Gardiner was born in England in 1599, toward the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. He was strong, active, and energetic, and as he grew up he was trained to be an engineer. Like a good many other ambitious young Englishmen of his day, he took service in the Low Countries,--that is, in what is now Holland and Belgium,--where the people were fighting against Spain for their independence. He was employed as "an engineer and master of works of fortification in the legers [camps] of the Prince of Orange." While he was in Holland he received an offer from a group of English "Lords and Gentlemen" of the Puritan party, who were interested in colonization in America, to go to New England and construct works of fortification there. "I was to serve them," he says, "in the drawing, ordering, and making of a city, towns, or forts of defence," and "I was appointed to attend such orders as Mr. John Winthrop, Esq., should appoint, and that we should choose a place both for the convenience of a good harbour and also for capableness and fitness for fortification." Lion Gardiner signed an agreement with them for four years at one hundred pounds, or five hundred dollars, a year and expenses paid to America for himself and his family. He was married before he left Holland and he and his wife sailed for London, July 10, 1635, in a small North Sea bark named the Batcheler. A month later they left London in the same little ship bound for Boston. The Batcheler was very small; there were only twelve men and two women on board, and these two women were Gardiner's wife, Mary Wilemson, and her maid, Eliza Coles. The voyage was rough and stormy and lasted nearly three months and a half. When they arrived in Boston on November 28, the snow was knee-deep, and the winter set in so cold and forbidding that there was some delay in carrying out the plans for the new colony. As Lieutenant Gardiner was an "expert engineer," the people of Boston were glad to take advantage of his stay with them to employ him in finishing some fortifications for them on Fort Hill. In the spring he sailed once more on the little Batcheler for the mouth of the Connecticut River, where it had been decided to build the new fort and plant the new colony. This place was selected partly because of its good harbor, and partly because a fort here would command the entrance to this "Long, Fresh, Rich River."