392 CHAP. IX. Mar. EMIGRATION TO NEW HAMPSHIRE AND RHODE ISLAND. The true tendency of the principles of Anne Hutchinson is best established by examining the institutions which were founded by her followers. We shall hereafter trace the career of Henry Vane. Wheelwright and his immediate friends removed to the banks of the Piscataqua; and, at the head of tide waters on that stream, they founded the town of Exeter; one more little republic in the wilderness, organized on the principles of natural justice by the voluntary combination of the inhabitants.1 The larger number of the friends of Anne Hutchinson, led by John Clarke and William Coddington, proceeded to the south, designing to make a plantation on Long Island, or near Delaware Bay. But Roger 1638. Williams welcomed them to his vicinity; and his own 24. influence, and the powerful name of Henry Vane, prevailed with Miantonomoh, the chief of the Narragansetts, to obtain for them a gift of the beautiful island of Rhode Island. The spirit of the institutions established by this band of voluntary exiles, on the soil which they owed to the benevolence of the natives, was derived from natural justice: a social compact, signed after the manner of the precedent at New Plymouth, so often imitated in America, founded the Mar. government upon the basis of the universal consent of 7. every inhabitant: the forms of the administration 11. were borrowed from the examples of the Jews. CodNov. dington was elected judge in the new Israel; and three elders were soon chosen as his assistants. The colony rested on the principle of intellectual liberty: philosophy itself could not have placed the right on a 1641. broader basis. The settlement prospered; and it be16-19. came necessary to establish a constitution. It was Mar. 1 Exeter Records, in Farmer's Belknap, 432. FORM OF GOVERNMENT IN RHODE ISLAND. 393 IX. therefore ordered by the whole body of freemen, and chap. "unanimously agreed upon, that the government, which this body politic doth attend unto in this island, and the jurisdiction thereof, in favor of our Prince, is a DEMOCRACIE, or popular government; that is to say, it is in the power of the body of freemen orderly assembled, or major part of them, to make or constitute just Lawes, by which they will be regulated, and to depute from among themselves such ministers as shall see them faithfully executed between man and man."1 "It was further ordered, that none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine;" the law for "liberty of conscience was perpetuated." The little community was held together by the bonds of affection and freedom of opinion: benevolence was their rule: they trusted in the power of love to win the victory; and "the signet for the state" was ordered to be "a sheafe of arrows," with "the motto AMOR VINCET OMNIA." A patent from England seemed necessary 1641 for their protection; and to whom could they direct 9. their letters but to the now powerful Henry Vane ?? Such were the institutions which sprung from the party of Anne Hutchinson. But she did not long enjoy their protection. Recovering from a transient dejection of mind, she had gloried in her sufferings, as her greatest happiness; and, making her way through the forest, she travelled by land to the settlement of Roger Williams, and from thence joined her friends on the island, sharing with them the hardships of early 3 1 I copied this, word for word, from the Records, now in Providence. 2 MS. extracts from R. I. Rec. Compare Callender, 29, &c.; Backus, i. 91.96, &c.; Knowles, c. xi. VOL. I. 50 3 Winthrop, i. 258. 4 Ibid. i. 259. Even Winthrop could err as to facts; see i. 296, and Savage's note. The records refute Winthrop's statement. Sept. 394 CHAP. emigrants. IX. DEATH OF MRS. HUTCHINSON. 2 Her powerful mind still continued its activity; young men from the colonies became converts to her opinions; and she excited such admiration, that to the leaders in Massachusetts it "gave cause of 1642. suspicion of witchcraft." She was in a few years left a widow, but was blessed with affectionate children. A tinge of fanaticism pervaded her family: one of her sons, and Collins her son-in-law, had ven1641. tured to expostulate with the people of Boston on the wrongs of their mother. But would the Puritan magistrates of that day tolerate an attack on their government? Severe imprisonment for many months was the punishment inflicted on the young men for their boldness. Rhode Island itself seemed no longer a safe place of refuge; and the whole family removed beyond New Haven into the territory of the Dutch. 1643. The violent Kieft had provoked an insurrection among the Indians; the house of Anne Hutchinson was attacked and set on fire; herself, her son-in-law, and all their family, save one child, perished by the rude weapons of the savages, or were consumed by the flames.1 3 Thus was personal suffering mingled with the peaceful and happy results of the watchfulness or the intolerance of Massachusetts. The legislation of that colony may be reproved for its jealousy, yet not for its cruelty; and Williams, and Wheelwright, and Aspinwall, suffered not much more from their banishment than some of the best men of the colony encountered from choice. For rumor had spread not wholly extravagant accounts of the fertility of the alluvial land along the borders 1 Gorton, in Hutchinson, i. 73. 3 Ibid. ii. 39. 4 Saml. Gorton's Defence, 58, 59. Winthrop, ii. 136. COLONIZATION OF CONNECTICUT. 395 IX. of the Connecticut; and the banks of that river were CHAP. already adorned with the villages of the Puritans, planted just in season to anticipate the rival designs of the Dutch. Mar. Oct. Jan. The valley of the Connecticut had early become an 1630. object of desire and of competition. The earl of Warwick was the first proprietary of the soil, under a grant from the council for New England; and it was next held by Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brooke, John 1631 Hampden, and others, as his assigns.1 Before any col- 19. ony could be established with their sanction, the people of New Plymouth had built a trading house at Wind- 1633. sor, and conducted with the natives a profitable commerce in furs. "Dutch intruders " from Manhattan, 1633. ascending the river, had also raised at Hartford the 8. house "of Good Hope," and struggled to secure the 1635. territory to themselves. The younger Winthrop, the future benefactor of Connecticut, one of those men in whom the elements of human excellence are mingled in the happiest union, returned from England July with a commission from the proprietaries of that region, to erect a fort at the mouth of the stream-a purpose which was accomplished. Yet, before his arrival in Massachusetts Bay, settlements had been commenced, by emigrants from the environs of Boston, at Hartford, and Windsor, and Wethersfield; and in the last days of the pleasantest of the autumnal months, a Oct. company of sixty pilgrims, women and children being o.s. of the number, began their march to the west. Never before had the forests of America witnessed such a But the journey was begun too late in the season: the winter was so unusually early and severe, Nov. that provisions could not arrive by way of the river; scene. 1 Trumbull's Connecticut, i. App. No. i. 7. Oct. 8. 15, 15. 396 IX. COLONIZATION OF CONNECTICUT. CHAP. imperfect shelter had been provided; cattle perished in great numbers; and the men suffered such privations, that many of them, in the depth of winter, abandoned their newly-chosen homes, and waded through the snows to the sea-board. 1636. April 26. Yet, in the opening of the next year, a government was organized, and civil order established; and the budding of the trees and the springing of the grass were May. signals for a greater emigration to the Connecticut. Some smaller parties had already made their way to the new Hesperia of Puritanism. In June, the principal caravan began its march, led by Thomas Hooker, "the light of the Western Churches." There were of the company about one hundred souls; many of them persons accustomed to affluence and the ease of European life. They drove before them numerous herds of cattle; and thus they traversed on foot the pathless forests of Massachusetts; advancing hardly ten miles a day through the tangled woods, across the swamps and numerous streams, and over the highlands that separated the several intervening valleys; subsisting, as they slowly wandered along, on the milk of the kine, which browsed on the fresh leaves and early June. shoots; having no guide, through the nearly untrodden wilderness, but the compass, and no pillow for their nightly rest but heaps of stones. How did the hills echo with the unwonted lowing of the herds! How were the forests enlivened by the loud and fervent piety of Hooker!1 Never again was there such a pilgrimage from the sea-side "to the delightful banks" of the Connecticut. The emigrants had been gathered from among the most valued citizens, the earliest settlers, and the oldest churches of the Bay. John 1 Hooker was "a Son of Thunder." See Morton, 239 and 240. |