Sidenote: Connecticut and Rhode Island free from disputes. Connecticut and Rhode Island were left with their old charters and their popularly elected governors, and thus were happily spared those quarrels over salaries, prerogatives, and fees which elsewhere in the colonies aroused so much ill-feeling. Governor Fletcher of New York was commissioned to take military control of Connecticut. He went to Hartford (1693) to assert his right; but meeting with rude treatment, felt impelled to return home, and little more was heard from him. Like Massachusetts, Connecticut was successful in preventing legal appeals to England. Sidenote: The Mason claim in New Hampshire. In New Hampshire--which was separated from Massachusetts in 1741 and became a royal province--there had been more than a century of dispute between the settlers and the proprietors respecting the Mason claim, and much confusion had at times arisen. The matter was at last ended by the purchase of the claim by a land company (1749), which released all of the settled tracts. 127. Effect of the French Wars (1700-1750). Sidenote: War with French and Indians. The aggressions of the French and their policy of inciting the northern and western Indians to murderous attacks on the slowly advancing English frontier, kept the colonies which abutted on New France in an almost constant state of excitement. Those provinces which had no Indian frontier, such as Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, and the Carolinas,--which latter had, however, several desperate local Indian uprisings to quell,--experienced but little alarm over the common danger, viewed schemes of union with indifference, and contributed but grudgingly to the funds and expeditions for general defence. Pennsylvania was open to attack along an extended border; the Germans and Quakers being opposed to making war on Indians, her frontier suffered greatly from frequent raids of the enemy. New York, being on the highway between the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes and Canada, was the scene of many bloody encounters. No other province was so greatly exposed, and on none did the cost of the prolonged and desperate contest between the French and English in America so heavily fall. In 1706, during Queen Anne's war (1702-1713), the French made an unavailing attack on Charleston, South Carolina. In the capture of Port Royal (1710), New England men chiefly participated, and they were otherwise prominent throughout the war. In King George's War (1744-1748), New Englanders alone took part, although New York and a few other colonies contributed to the army chest. Louisburg was captured in 1745 by New England troops, who were highly elated at their brilliant conquest. England, too busy with her own affairs, could not well send protection the following year, when a French fleet threatened New England; a curious chapter of marine disasters alone saved the Americans from being severely punished in retaliation.