History of the Colony of New Haven to its absorption into Connecticut

Preface

. THE author cannot better express the feelings which have prompted him to study and write the history of the Colony of New Haven, than by appropriating the following words of Dr. Trumbull : — " No man of genius and curiosity can read accounts of the origin of nations, the discovery, settlement, and progress of new countries, without a high degree of entertainment. But in the settlement of his own country, in the lives of his ancestors, in their adventures, morals, jurisprudence, and heroism, he feels himself particularly interested. He at once becomes a party in their affairs, and travels and converses with them with a kind of filial delight. While he beholds them braving the horrors of the desert, the terrors of the savage, the distresses of famine and war, he admires their courage, and is pleased with all their escapes from danger, and all their progress in settlement, population, opulence, literature, and happiness."

Deeply interested in the early history of New Haven, he thought that by imparting the information which many desire, but few have leisure to glean from the wide field over which it is scattered, he might do some service to the community in which he lives. He feels assured that many descendants of the

PREFACE.

. IV Christian Englishmen who first brought the light of civilization to these shores will be interested in his work. He hopes that some whose ancestors came hither at a later period, and others who though born in foreign lands have chosen New Haven as their home, and learned to love it, will gladly acquaint them selves with the men by whose toil and heroism this goodly heritage was cut out of a wilderness. The fulness of the records, both of the town and of the colony of New Haven, makes it possible to present the first planters as, in large measure, the narrators of their own history. The author, preferring that they should speak for themselves, has made large extracts from their records and from other con temporary writings. The town records of New Haven for the first ten years are in print, and the manuscript records of the next sixteen years have been carefully read.

The records of other towns within the colony, being less accessible to the author, have not been so thoroughly examined : they are, how ever, but meagre as compared with those of New Haven. Ralph D. Smith diligently searched those of Guilford, and Lambert those of Milford ; and their histories have been freely used. Introducing the fathers of the New Haven Colony, and for bearing for the most part both eulogy and censure, the author has left them to make, with their own words, such impression as they may. He does not conceal his admiration of them ; he does not claim that they were faultless : he desires to present them just as they were. His first thought was to allow every person to appear in his own orthography ; but on further reflection, he concluded to give

PREFACE.

. V a few specimens of the phonetic spelling of the seventeenth century, and then, by reducing all quotations to present usage, to deliver his readers from the difficulty of interpreting incident to the ancient lawlessness. Accordingly the certificate of conformity which Davenport received the first Sunday after his induction at St. Stephen's is printed on page 30 as it was written ; as are also the first two documents in the Appendix. In recording an event which took place between the first day of January and the twenty-fifth day of March, the year has been written according to New Style, or else both styles are given ; but the days in a month are in all cases numbered according to the ancient computation. The use of Old Style as applied to days will occasion little if any trouble to the reader.

Even if he forgets that, according to our way of reckoning, the event took place ten days later, his misconception will not be very important. But to record in Old Style an event which hap pened in the early part of the modern year, without intimating that the year needed correction, might seriously mislead. Reference has not always been made to the original authority, in confirmation of a particular statement. Such references may be useful to the specialist, but when frequent are annoying to most readers. Public records have been sufficiently indicated as authority for information derived from that source, and any item acquired by gleaning from the collections of Historical Societies is definitely referred to the volume from which it was. taken. But references to Winthrop's Journal, Hubbard's His tory of New England, Mather's Magnalia, and Hutchinson's History of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, have been for the most part omitted, for the reason that the specialist can readily

PREFACE.

. VI t find whatever these writers have transmitted to us concerning any particular event. To all who in answer to his inquiries have aided the author in the compilation of this history, he presents his grateful acknowledgments. A special tribute is due to one who has passed suddenly and peacefully into the invisible world since this preface was begun. Henry White was,.of all men, the most learned in antiquarian lore pertaining to New Haven. Other occupations obliged him to relinquish his long-cherished design of writing a topographical history of his native town ; but his torical inquiries were to the last his recreation and delight. He took a deep interest in the author's work as soon as he knew that it had been undertaken, encouraged him to believe that it would be a pleasure to converse frequently concerning it, and on one occasion spent days in such a search of the land-records as only he was competent to make.

In the last interview which the author had with him, he gave vocal expression to a desire already evident, exclaiming with animation, " I wish I could help you more." New Haven, October, 1880. TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Appendix

. PAGE. I. Autobiography of Michael Wigglesworth . . .531 II. Nathaniel Rowe's Letter to Winthrop ... 535 III. Lamberton's Ship cy, IV. Names of People as they were seated in the New- Haven Meeting-House in 1647, 1656, and 1662 . 542 V. Hopkins Grammar School 555 VI. New Haven's Remonstrance 561 VII. New Haven's Case stated 566 ILLUSTRATIONS. 1. New Haven in 1641 Faces title-page. 2. A Barque of the Seventeenth Century ... 55 3. Autographs of Davenport and Eaton .... 67 4. Medal commemorating the Settlement of New Haven, 74 5. Autographs of Momaugin and his Council ... 88 6. Autographs of Montowese and Sawseunck ... S9 7. A Portrait which belonged to the Eaton Family . 115 8. Portrait of John Davenport 123 9. Milford in 1646 Faces page 155 10. Town Seal of Milford 157 11. A Meeting-House of the Seventeenth Century . . 246 12.

Ground Plan of a Meeting-House 249 13. Whitfield's House as seen from the South . . . 349 14. Whitfield's House as seen from the West . . 349 15. First Floor of Whitfield's House 351 16. Second Floor of Whitfield's House .... 351 17. Attic Floor of Whitfield's House

Chapter I. Condition Of England In The Seventeenth Cen- Tury, As It

AFFECTED THE PURITAN EMIGRATION IN GENERAL. EMIGRATION to New England in the seventeenth century is to be attributed to the discomfort ex perienced by the English Puritans in their native land, rather than to any attractiveness in this transatlantic wilderness. It is difficult for those who from their earliest remembrance have been surrounded with the security, beauty, and plenty enjoyed by the posterity of these' colonists, to conceive of the same territory as it was seen by their ancestors when they arrived, or as it presented itself to the eye of imagination when they decided to emigrate. New England is to its present inhabitants their pleasant home ; but the Englishmen, who in the seventeenth century were uncomfortable in England, loved England as their dear native land, and thought of America as a foreign country, and as such, destitute of the attraction and charm which appertain to the idea of home.

Moreover, emigration to the New World was not merely exile from a land they were reluctant to leave : it was exposure to suffering by cold and hunger, to peril of death by shipwreck, by wild beasts, and by treacherous savages. Such liabilities are, indeed, not unattractive to men in whom the love of adventure predominates ; but the English Puritans were in general as free from that restlessness of mind which seeks relief in excitement as any people in the world. Their theology furnishing a central Being whom they acknowledged as infinitely their superior, they were content to rest in him, and so had inward peace. Re ligion, inclining them to sobriety and industry, fostered the love of home, of security, and of comfort. Individ uals among them may have been susceptible to the love of adventure ; but, as a class, the planters of New Eng land were not men naturally inclined to desert their homes, and expose themselves to hardships and perils on the ocean and in the wilderness.

On the contrary, their training had been such as inclined them to remain in their native land. This is true, even of the unmar ried men ; but the reluctance to emigrate was, of course, far greater when one must expose wife and children to hardships they were less able than himself to endure. If the settlement of New England had been the result of mere adventure, its history would have had so little connection with that of the mother-country, that its relation might properly commence with the first arrival of colonists ; but actually there is such a con tinuity of history between the emigration and the influences which led to it as requires the historian of a New England colony to discourse of England more than the mere title of his work would seem to jus tify." To relate the history of New Haven, therefore, one must go back to an earlier date than its actual settlement.

The contest between arbitrary and constitutional government, which had never ceased in England after King John signed the Magna Charta, raged with un usual violence while the throne was occupied by the Stuarts. The reign of the Tudors had been a period of comparative rest ; the Wars of the Roses having so weakened the great barons, who in earlier times made and deposed kings at their pleasure, and the introduc tion of artillery having so strengthened the monarch against an enemy destitute of these engines of destruc tion, that, from Henry the Seventh to Elizabeth, there was but faint resistance to the will of the sovereign by the hereditary lords who sat in the upper house of Parliament. By the transfer of the supremacy of the Church, another check on the royal prerogative had been removed ; so that the lords spiritual, who in the olden time had been as little dependent on the king as the lords temporal, were now subservient to the power which placed them in office.

The Tudors, therefore, transmitted to their 'successors a more arbitrary sceptre than had been wielded by earlier kings. But the time of the Stuarts was less favorable than that of the Tudors for maintaining a theory and practice of government which contravened the rights of the subject. Formerly the great barons had come to Parliament followed by hundreds of archers and spearmen ready to back their lords in any contest which might occur ; but the barons only, and not their retainers, had presumed to put to question the conduct of the over lord. Out of the decay of this feudal baronage, there had gradually grown up a new antagonist to despotism, which, exhibiting considerable power in the reign of Elizabeth, vigorously encountered the house of Stuart at its accession, and suffered no permanent defeat till it had brought a king of England to the scaffold.

The change in the tenure of land whereby the vassal had become a farmer and in some instances a freeholder ; the growth of towns by the increase of manufactures and of commerce ; the intellectual activity awakened by the revival of learning, by the new art of printing, by the reform in theology, and by the revolutionary transfer of the supremacy of the Church, — had conspired to lift the common people into a higher position. With this elevation of the common people, the House of Com mons rose in importance. The shires and towns, which originally were invited to send representatives to Par liament, that through them they might give consent to taxes which the king wished to levy not only upon the greater lords, but upon the whole population, at first sent men, who, having no ambition to figure as legis lators, gladly retired to their homes as soon as they had voted the supplies required.

But consent to taxa tion was sometimes accompanied with a statement of grievances ; and afterward, when the Commons had grown in power and courage, was withholden till a promise of redress had been obtained. At first the Commons were content if laws were enacted by the royal authority in accordance with their petitions, but afterward required that the order of proceeding should be reversed, so that all legislation must originate and receive its final shape in Parliament. Whatever resistance had been offered to arbitrary government during the reign of the Tudors, had pro ceeded, not chiefly, as in earlier times, from the House of Lords, but chiefly from the House of Commons, rep resenting a power already great and constantly increas ing. There had been a change, moreover, in the mode in which acts of despotism were resisted ; for the king no longer found his subjects arrayed in arms against him, but meeting him, whenever he asked for another supply of money, with a demand for further restriction on his prerogative.

Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, found this disposition of the Commons so annoying, that she avoided, as much as possible, giving occasion for such conflicts ; well knowing that the Crown, if de pendent on Parliament for supplies, could obtain them only by concession. By avoiding as much as possible the waste of war, by conducting into her exchequer every stream of tribute which could be controlled with out the aid of the Commons, she hoped to render herself independent of Parliaments, and would probably have succeeded but for the wars forced upon her, in the last half of her reign, by Mary of Scotland and Philip of Spain. This new antagonist to arbitrary government, which had become somewhat formidable to the last of the Tudors, continued to increase in courage and strength under her successor.

But not only was the age in which the Stuarts reigned less favorable than that of the Tudors to the theory and practice of arbitrary govern ment, but the two families differed in their ability to cope with this new antagonist as much as their respective eras differed in the kind of ability required. If the two families could have changed places, the Stuarts might perhaps have been competent to deal with such Parliaments as assembled in the reign of Henry the Seventh ; and the Tudors would certainly have shown more tact than the Stuarts did in contend ing against* the English people of the seventeenth century. This contest between the Stuarts and the English people, on account of its bearing on emigration to New England and the commencement of a new colony at New Haven, we shall briefly review.

James the First ascended the throne of Elizabeth in the belief that by the ordinance of God he was entitled to govern without regard to the will of his subjects. He had already declared, in his work on " The True Law of Free Monarchy," that, "although a good king will frame his actions to be according to law, yet he is not bound thereto but of his own will and for example giving to his subjects." At a later date, he said in a speech in the Star-Chamber, "As it is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do, so it is pre sumption and a high contempt in a subject, to dispute what a king can do, or to say that a king cannot do this or that." Some writers attribute to him, and some to his son Charles, the saying, " I will govern according to the common weal, but not according to the common will."

If James did not originate, he would doubtless have been willing to adopt, this form of words. PURITAN EMIGRA TION IN GENERAL. 7 But, though the new king was known to entertain such a theory of kingship, he was received by those of his subjects who held the opposite sentiments with joy and hope; for he was no more objectionable in this respect than Elizabeth, and they confidently expected that he would so exercise his prerogative as to relieve them from one of the most galling of their burdens. The Tudors had transferred the supremacy of the Church from the pope to the king, but had shown themselves as arbitrary in their ecclesiastical as in their civil supremacy, legislating without the concur rence of clergy or laity, and enforcing the strictest conformity to the established ritual. The spirit in which Elizabeth ruled the Church may be inferred from the note she sent to the Bishop of Ely, when he de murred to a proposal that he should surrender a portion of his garden because a favorite of the queen desired that site for a new palace.

" Proud prelate," she wrote, "you know what you were before I made you what you are. If you do not immediately comply with my request, by God, I will unfrock you." With similar tyranny she had refused every application for the relief of persons who had scruples in regard to some of the ceremonies prescribed in the ritual of the Church. These Puritans hoped, that as James had been educated in Scotland, where the Church itself had controlled its own reformation, and had carried the reform farther than the Tudors had been willing to carry it in the Church of England, they should find the new king friendly to their wish for further progress in the work of amendment. Possibly, if they had been of the same political principles with the king, they might have ob tained some concessions. But he well knew that the Puritans were to a man of the popular party, and constituted its strength, and that on the other hand the opponents of further reform in the Church were supporters of the royal prerogative.

His choice between the parties was soon made, and at the Hampton Court Conference, in the first year of his reign, was fully declared. In his journey from Scotland, a petition signed by eight hundred and twenty-five English clergymen from twenty-five counties had been presented to him, asking for a conference in regard to ecclesiastical abuses. In response to this petition, four of the leading Puritan divines, selected by the king, were invited to meet some dignitaries of the Church opposed to all change, in a conference before the. king as moderator. But the conference was so conducted as to show that the king had already decided the matter adversely to the Puritans. The first day they were not admitted to his presence, the time being spent in pre liminary consultation between the king and the bishops.

On the second day, after the Puritans had stated their case, and 'their opponents had replied, the king, for getting his position as moderator, took up the argument for conformity, and so " peppered " the Puritans, to use his own expression, that they were dismayed and put to silence. All that the petitioners could obtain, as the result of this conference, was that candidates for confirmation should be previously instructed by means of a cate chism to be prepared for that purpose, that a new trans lation of the Scriptures should be provided, that the Apocrypha should be distinguished from the canonical Scriptures, that a few explanatory words should be inserted in the Articles of Religion, and that the enforce ment of uniformity might be delayed to give time for the resolution of doubt and the settlement of conviction.

In his interview with the bishops, previous to the admission of the Puritan clergymen, the king had pro pounded the prejudice he himself entertained against private baptism by persons not in orders, and the Churchmen had consented that it should be restricted to cases of necessity. His own objection to conformity to the Church of England being thus taken away, he had no regard to the scruples of others. As between the two Churches of England and of Scotland, he avowed his preference for the former, naively admitting that the preference issued from his political principles, rather than from his religious convictions. "No bishop," said he, "no king." "A Scottish presbytery agreeth as well with monarchy as God with the devil." But James had no occasion for instituting such a comparison in reply to the petitioners ; for the petition expressly disavowed a wish for "parity," and asked only for changes not affecting the constitution of the Church.

The Puritans had not yet become disaffected toward episcopacy ; and, if James had granted them re lief from the grievances mentioned in their petition, there would have been less of extravagance in the flattery of the courtiers who styled him the Scottish Solomon. As it was, he resembled Rehoboam rather than Solomon ; driving the Puritans into such hostility to prerogative, both royal and episcopal, that nothing less would content them than "a church without a bishop, and a state without a king." It appears from " Certain Considerations Touching the Better Pacifica tion and Edification of the Church of England," written by Lord Bacon, and "dedicated to his most excellent majesty," that James, like Rehoboam, came to his decis ion in opposition to wise counsel. Bacon says, "These ecclesiastical matters are things not properly appertain ing to my profession ; but finding that it is in many things seen that a man that standeth off and somewhat removed from a plot of ground doth better survey it and discover it than those which are upon it, I thought it not impossible, but that I, as a looker-on, might cast mine eyes upon some things which the actors them selves, especially some being interested, some being led and addicted, some declared and engaged, did not or would not see."

He inquires, " Why the civil state should be purged and restored by good and wholesome laws made every third or fourth year in parliament assembled, devising remedies as fast as time breedeth mischief ; and contrariwise the ecclesiastical state should still continue upon the dregs of time, and receive no alteration now for these five and forty years or more. But if it be said to me that there is a difference be tween civil causes and ecclesiastical, they may as well tell me that churches and chapels need no reparations, though castles and houses do : whereas, commonly, to speak truth, dilapidations of the inward and spiritual edifications of the church of God are in all times as great as the outward and material." The first parliament in the reign of the new king met a few weeks after the conference at Hampton Court.

A majority of the lower house were in full sympathy with the Puritan clergy in desiring further reformation of the Church ; and some who were personally indiffer ent to the ceremonies and other matters in controversy were disposed to side with the aggrieved party, either on the ground that rings, surplices, and crosses were important to those who esteemed them important, or that, by favoring the Puritans, they might obtain from them more aid in the impending contest between the Crown and the Commons. The speaker, in his first address to the king, took occasion to affirm that " by the power of your majesty's great and high court of parliament only, new laws are to be instituted, imperfect laws reformed, and inconvenient laws abrogated ; " that " no such law can be instituted, reformed, or abro gated, but by the unity of the Commons' agreement, the Lords' accord, and your majesty's royal and regal assent ; " that " this court standeth compounded of two powers ; the one ordinary, the other absolute : ordinary in the Lords' and Commons' proceedings, but in your highness absolute, either negatively to frustrate or affirmatively to confirm, but not to institute."

In making up the roll of the House, it was found that the king had already decided that one of the'persons returned as elected was ineligible, and had ordered a new election, so that there were two claimants of the seat. The House insisted on its privilege of determin ing its own membership in all cases of contested elec tions, but compromised with the king by excluding both claimants with the consent of the first chosen, and ordering a third election. With great copiousness of courteous speech they established so firmly the privilege of the House to determine contested elections, that it has never since been brought in question. On the 13th of June, a committee reported a form for a petition to his majesty, in which they say, "We have thought it expedient, rather by this our humble peti tion to recommend to your majesty's godly considera tion certain matters of grievance resting in your royal power and princely zeal, either to abrogate or moderate, than to take the public discussing of the same unto ourselves ; to the end (if it so seem good to your high ness) we may from the sacred fountain of your ma jesty's most royal and religious heart, wholly and only derive such convenient remedy and relief therein as to your princely wisdom may seem most meet.

The matters of grievance (that we be not troublesome to your majesty) are these : the the use of certain rites and ceremonies in this Church, as the cross in baptism, the wearing of the surplice in ordinary parish churches, and the subscription required of the ministers further than is commanded by the laws of the realm ; things which, by long experience, have been found to be the occasion of such difference, trouble, and contention in this Church, as thereby divers profitable and painful ministers, not in contempt of authority or desire of novelty, as they sincerely profess and we are verily persuaded, but upon conscience toward God, refusing the same, some of good desert have been deprived, others of good expectation withheld from entering into the ministry." It is not certain that this petition was ever presented to the king ; but he must have known that it was on the way, when, on the 26th of the same month, he sent a letter to the House declining to receive a subsidy, which all the world knew would be granted only in return for the redress of grievances.

PURITAN EMIGRA TION IN GENERAL. 13 Meantime the House had sent to the king a letter styled " An Apology Touching Their Privileges," in which they complain, with great copiousness of respect ful language, of the wrong which had been done to his majesty by misinformation, touching the estate of his subjects and the privileges of the House, and " disclosing unto your majesty the truth of such matters as hitherto by misinformation hath been suppressed or perverted." On the 7th of July the House was prgrogued ; and when it again assembled in November, 1605, the discov ery of the gunpowder-plot had hushed the strife be tween the Puritans and the king, uniting all Protes tants in a common enmity against Papists. But in subsequent sessions the Commons found so many grievances to be redressed before supplies could be granted, that the king preferred to dissolve the Parlia ment in February, 161 1, rather than fill his exchequer by further sacrifices of his prerogative.

In April, 1614, having first by private negotiation secured a promise of aid from some who had been leaders of the popular party, the king ventured to call his second Parliament, but the experiment proved a failure ; the Commons, even after the king had sent a message requesting that a supply might be granted and threat ening to dissolve the Parliament if they refused, voting to postpone supply till their grievances were redressed. The Parliament was accordingly dissolved just two months after it began to sit. The Parliament which assembled in January, 1621, was at first on good terms with the monarch, who in the opening speech, acknowledging that he had been misled by evil counsellors, made fair promises for the future. The two parties were drawn together by their common sympathy with the king's son-in-law, the Elect or Palatine, involved in a quarrel with the German emperOr, which threatened to deprive him of his hered itary dominions.

The king naturally desired to assist the husband of his daughter and the father of her chil dren to preserve his patrimony ; and the people sympa thized with the elector as the champion of Protestant ism, overborne by the combined forces of Romanism. The Commons at once voted supplies for carrying on war in aid of the elector.

But, before the expiration of the year, the king and the Commons were again at vari ance ; he rebuking them for meddling with matters of state which did not concern them, and declaring him self "very free and able to punish any man's misdemeanors in Parliament, as well during their sitting as after ; " and they responding with a formal protest as follows : viz., " That the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England ; and that the arduous and urgent affairs con cerning the king, state, and the defence of the realm and of the Church of England, and the making and maintenance of laws and redress of mischiefs and grievances which daily happen within this realm, are proper subjects and matter of counsel and debate in Parlia ment ; and that, in the handling and proceeding of those businesses, every member of the House hath, and of right ought to have, freedom of speech to propound, treat, reason, and bring to conclusion the same ; that the Commons in Parliament have like liberty and freedom to treat of these matters in such order as in their judgments shall seem fittest ; and that every such member of the said House hath like freedom from all impeach ment, imprisonment, and molestation (other than by the censure of the House itself), for or concerning any bill, speaking, reasoning, or declaring of any matter or matters touching the Parliament or Parliament business ; and that, if any of the said members be complained of and questioned for any thing said or done in Parliament, the same is to be showed to the king, by the advice and assent of all the Commons, before the king give cre dence to any private informations."