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Windsor, Saybrook, and Weathersfield. The Connecticut settlers appealed for aid to Massachusetts and Plymouth. A small army was raised which, under Captains John Mason and John Underhill, stormed the Indian village and almost exterminated the tribe (1637).

      51. Free Government in Connecticut.—For a short time Connecticut owed allegiance to Massachusetts, but independence was assured in 1639. The people adopted a written constitution, liberal in its terms. This was the first of its kind in America, and was chiefly the work of Rev. Thomas Hooker of Hartford. In 1638 a colony was founded at New Haven by a congregation of Englishmen under Theophilus Eaton and John Davenport. Other congregations, all ultra-Puritanic, formed towns around, which were at first independent, but afterward united with New Haven. The new colony was weak, however, and was finally joined to Connecticut in 1665.

52. Evolution of New England.—Four years previously Massachusetts had absorbed the last of the towns founded in the colony of Maine, which Sir Ferdinando Gorges, a prominent member of the Plymouth Company, had been endeavoring to develop since 1622. The colony of towns planted on the Piscataqua under the grant made by the Plymouth Company to John Mason in 1629, which afterward became known as New Hampshire, was incorporated with Massachusetts by 1643.^[36] Thus one by one the New England colonies were being evolved and developed, Massachusetts, however, retaining her primacy. While local differences were soon to be detected, the people of the entire region were one in their main characteristics. They were religious after the Puritan fashion. They were brave and enterprising in extending their borders and their influence. They were thrifty and resolute in extracting wealth from their rugged soil and their storm-tossed waters.

THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY.

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      53. Formation of the Confederacy.—Similarity of habits, union of interests, and contiguity of territory naturally led the New England colonies early to think of establishing some form of political union. In 1637 the Connecticut people, who were menaced by the Dutch on the one hand and by the French Canadians and Indians on the other, made overtures for union to the people of Massachusetts. The latter were indifferent, but the proposition was renewed in 1639 and in 1643, and was acted upon favorably in the latter year. One reason for the final success of the movement for union was the belief that the civil turmoil in England might react on this side of the Atlantic, especially if the illiberal king should win. Accordingly, in 1643 a written constitution bound the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven in a “perpetual league of friendship and amity for offense and defense,” under the name of “The United Colonies of New England.” Each colony was independent in local matters, and each contributed two members to a commission which determined such large matters of common interest as declaring war, forming leagues, etc. In case of disagreement among the commissioners, questions were to be decided by the legislatures of the colonies.

      54. The Work of the Confederacy.—The Confederacy thus established lasted theoretically forty-one years, but was really efficient only during the first twenty. The chief difficulty it had to contend with was the disproportionate burden laid upon Massachusetts, which had but one vote and yet was more heavily taxed in men and money than any other member of the league. This led to friction, but in the main, Massachusetts, being stronger than the other colonies, succeeded in directing the general policy. This was on the whole exclusive, since the people of Rhode Island and Maine were not allowed to enter the league. There was a curious disregard of England’s wishes in the matter of such a combination of dependent colonies, but at that time England had enough to do in looking after herself. Massachusetts was particularly jealous of English interference, and did not even proclaim the Protectorate of so stanch a Puritan as Cromwell. The Confederacy need not, indeed, have attracted much notice, for the commissioners acted mainly as a committee to look after the general prosperity of the colonies. But Massachusetts showed not a little boldness in passing laws against the raising of troops in the interest of King Charles. There was also, as was to be expected, quite a show of religious independence. The Presbyterians, although for a short time triumphant in England, were not so fortunate in Massachusetts; for in 1648 a synod was held at Cambridge, which defined and established a Congregational system, the principles of which have been strong in New England ever since, and have played an important part in the evolution of American democracy.

55. Trouble with the Dutch.—Meanwhile the settlers in New Haven and Connecticut came into unpleasant relations with the Dutch at New Amsterdam, on account of settlements pushed out in the direction of the latter. When England and Holland went to war in 1652, the Connecticut colonies tried to make the other members of the Confederacy engage in hostilities with the Dutch in America, but Massachusetts resisted. Cromwell sent over a fleet to Boston, which only partially succeeded in coercing Massachusetts; but before the eight hundred New Englanders gathered to attack New Amsterdam could be utilized, news came that England and Holland had made peace. Another instance of local troubles between Connecticut and Massachusetts was due to a war of trade duties between the two colonies, which came near breaking down the union. Still another cause of commotion was the arrival in Massachusetts of a few members of the newly established society of Friends, or Quakers, who astonished the staid citizens by their extravagant opposition to the state religion. Some laws were passed against them, and four were actually hanged on Boston Common. Plymouth and New Haven also treated them harshly, but Connecticut indulged in little persecution, and Rhode Island in none at all.

56. Dissolution of the New England Confederacy.—The practical breaking up of the Confederacy followed the restoration of Charles II., and was due to the fact that the king suspected that the colonies wished to separate completely from England. They had been slow to recognize his supremacy, and had harbored two of the judges that had condemned his father. At first Massachusetts managed to stave off the crisis; but in 1664 the king sent over four royal commissioners to investigate colonial affairs. After conquering the Dutch port of New Amsterdam, with the aid of Connecticut and of the troops they brought over, the commissioners quarreled with the people of Massachusetts with regard to their charter. The General Court of the colony evaded giving an answer to the king’s demands, and his agents returned home, having accomplished little. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Plymouth were more submissive, and the first named was rewarded with a liberal charter and with the annexation of New Haven. This interference of the king with American affairs greatly weakened the Confederacy; besides, the new generation that was growing up probably did not feel the same alienation from England that their fathers had felt.

      57. King Philip’s War.—Meanwhile there had been trouble with the Indians, although the New Englanders had treated them better than any of the other colonists had done—a fact strikingly exemplified in the life work of the Apostle John Eliot, who translated the Bible into a written language rather unskillfully invented for them by himself. Troubles arose in connection with Alexander and Philip, two sons of Massasoit, the friendly chief of the Pokanokets. Alexander died at Plymouth, and Philip thought the colonists had poisoned him; hence he planned a general Indian uprising, making his headquarters on Mount Hope, a peninsula running into Narragansett Bay. After many fiendish outrages had been committed on towns in Plymouth and Massachusetts, the federal commissioners enlisted a volunteer army. In December, 1675, this army attacked a palisaded fort of the Indians at what is now South Kingston, Rhode Island, and slew about one thousand warriors, half the force within the walls. Philip still continued the struggle; but the following August he was killed, to the great rejoicing of the whole of New England; for the two years’ war, since known as King Philip’s War (1675–1676), had been a frightful experience.

      58. Loss of Massachusetts’ Charter.—Their own king was now to give the people of Massachusetts further trouble. Massachusetts, by extending her dominion over New Hampshire and Maine, had involved herself in disputes with the proprietors of those colonies; Church of England people were enraged at the fact that she would not tolerate their form of religious service or give them the suffrage; she was also charged with violating the navigation laws. Aggrieved at these things, Charles made New Hampshire a royal province in 1679; but his governor proved a tyrant, the people rebelled, and in six years

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