1 ful colleague of Mr. Davenport in the ministry of the Gospel at New Haven, who about this time went over to England; as also the death of Mr. Samuel Eaton, eldest son to the Governor, who died sometime before his father, a man of great hope; yet in the midst of their sorrows the hands of Mr. William Leet, who was next ehosen Governor, were strengthened to hold up the walls of this building for sundry years, even to the dissolution of the Colony, and its conjunction with Connecticut; of both which Colonies, so united, he was the late Governor, and his praise is in the gates; but [he] also was not long after called to his rest, about the year 1680.2 it There remains, now, only to give an account of the dissolution, but now mentioned, of New Haven Colony, if may be so called. There had been an appearance of unquietness in the minds of sundry, upon the account of enfranchisement, and sundry civil privileges thence flowing, which they thought too shortly tethered up in the foundation of the government. This spirit began to appear after Mr. Eaton's death, and not considerably before, yet things were kept in a tolerable stay by the prudence and vigilancy of their magistracy until Connecticut, after the King's restoration, had procured a Patent3 from his Majesty for that side of the country, which, considering the situation of New Haven Colony, and the intermixture of towns with those formerly belonging to Connecticut, could not conveniently be drawn without inclusion thereof, and [it] was accordingly done. But when the Colonies came to treat together about union, there was, for a time, some misunderstanding between them; New Haven thought Connecticut was too hasty in entertaining some parcels out of several towns in a divided way from the rest, who were more forward to embrace the alteration than their neighbors could be; on the other hand Connecticut was apt to think New Haven was too slow and backward to entertain a motion, so much to their own and the general advantage of the country. These, with other like considerations, produced some less pleasant passages in letters and treaties;" 2 1 1655 or 6.-H. April 16, 1683, says Farmer.-H. 310.-H. 4 See the proceedings in Trumbull, i. 252—76.—H. See page . but after New Haven had taken time, (which sure they might well be allowed to do,) something like Jephtha's daughter, in bewailing her virginity, viz. to breathe upon, and look round about them, as to the consequences of so great a mutation, wherein they that had, for twenty years time, stood and been on all hands owned as a body politic, with entire power and jurisdiction within themselves, should now be divested of all at once, and be swallowed up in another body, wherein they could not ascertain themselves that things should be carried so much to their satisfaction as they had been while the staff was in their own hands; these things, being at leisure thought upon, could not but affect them; but spirits began to settle at length, and so, in the issue, to come up to a closure, which hath in time, by the blessing of God, who delights in the union of his people, grown up to that measure of comfortableness as that the former days and troublesome birth-pangs, sometime felt, are no more remembered, while every one is sitting under his own vine and his fig tree with peace and tranquillity. Those who were employed in laying the foundation of New Haven Colony, though famed for much wisdom, experience, and judgment, yet did not they foresee all [the] inconveniency that might arise from such a frame of government, so differing from the other Colonies in the constitution thereof, manifest in their declining that prudent and equal temperament of all interests in their administration of justice, with them managed by the sole authority of the rulers, without the concurrence of a jury, the benefit of which had been so long confirmed by the experience of some ages in our own nation; for where the whole determining, as well both matter of fact as matter of law, with the sentence and execution thereof, depends on the sole authority of the judges, what can be more done for the establishing of an arbitrary power?- which is much complained of elsewhere in the world. It can never be safe to leave so large a compass for the power of rulers, which is apt to overflow the strictest bounds and limits that can be set. The motions of those - engines, which are carried through many pullies, must needs be more steady, equal, deliberate, and uniform. The best man's passions (which at no time work the righteousness of God) are too often apt to mix themselves with their definitive sentences, if not wholly to overrule them; therefore hath the wisdom of all ages found out some way to balance sovereign and absolute power, which else would move very extravagantly, if not destructively, as to the good of the whole. The want of which, as some wise men think, was that which made the Israelites complain so much of the heaviness of Solomon's yoke, with whom it was no more than, go and fall upon him; him; and the people had too much reason to fear that his successor, that had not the tithe of his father's wisdom, might yet double or increase the weight of his father's hand in point of severity. It cannot but be more safe for any people not to have sentences pass, or take place, without the consent of neighbors and peers, as is well known in England, commended for the most equal and best tempered government of any in the whole world. Too much rigor and severity in church administrations is attended also with as great inconveniences as the other; for though negligence and remissness in all public administrations tends to the ruin of a church or state, like a ship or vessel, whose tackling is loosed, so as they cannot strengthen the mast, and where the law will easily take the prey; yet on the other hand when things are by an undue severity, or an unjustifiable azgiba strained to the height, it hazards the breaking all in pieces. Witness the experience of late attempts in those that, not content with the wisdom of their predecessors, have endeavored the new moulding of societies, after a more exact mode, (as at Frankfort, Amsterdam, and elsewhere,) but have generally shipwrecked their designs upon this undiscerned rock. A great error was likewise committed by these gentlemen that founded New Haven Colony, in that, having been most of them inhabitants and traffickers in the great City of London, the famous mart of the whole world in a manner, they contrived the frame of their chief towns as if trade and merchandize had been as inseparably annexed to them, as the shadow is to the body, in the shining of the sun; in expectation whereof, and hope of drawing the whole stream thereof to themselves, they laid out too much of their stocks and estates in building of fair and stately houses, wherein they at the first outdid the rest of the country, which had been much better reserved till afterwards, when they could have found the matter feasible; therein forgetting the counsel of the wise man, first to prepare their matters in the field, or abroad, before they go about to erect their fabrics. Who ever built a tower and wine press before he planted his vineyard, or proved the soil to be commodious for that purpose, that did not thereby leave behind some monument of his error and mistake? Thus the lot is cast into the lap, but the disposing thereof is from the Lord. Riches is not always to men of understanding, (of which there seemed less want in the aforesaid gentlemen, than elsewhere,) but time and chance happens to them all. It is the providence of the Almighty that rules the world, and not the wisdom and contrivements of the sons of men; he pulleth down one and raiseth up another. However, the grace and blessing of God eminently appeared towards that people, who were brought up to a different course of life, yet did they willingly submit themselves to the pleasure of him that governs the world, when his providence put them upon another kind of employment than formerly they had been accustomed unto, and wherein they have been very successful, and, in a manner, outdone others, that by their education had much more advantage to attain the greatest skill therein. As to the planting of Rhode Island, Providence, and the places adjoining, near the Narrhoganset Bay, in the years 1637 and 1638: The persons who were dismissed out of the Colony of the Massachusetts, especially from Boston, or disfranchised therein for their tumultuous and seditious carriages, tending to the subversion both of church and state, being advised of an island beyond Cape Cod, and near adjoining to, or in, the Narrhoganset Bay, called Aquidneyk, made means to purchase it for themselves, and those that should see cause to remove their families thither, upon occasion of the troubles they met with at Boston. There were several of them men of estate and quality, who engaged in the business, and had peaceable possession of the island by lawful purchase, as well as free consent of the natives, that inhabited it before. And so, having transplanted themselves, within a few years, by the commodiousness of the soil, with other advantages that attended the planters, they soon raised two flourishing Plantations upon the island; and, not long after, the bounds of the said island proving too narrow, those that were willing to join with them in their way of living and government made purchase of some of those lands that lie upon the main, (where Mr. Williams and his friends had made some beginnings of a Plantation before, Anno 1634 and 1635,3 calling it by the name of Providence ;) by whom also was procured another neck of land not far off, in like manner, called by them Warwick.1 Their civil government was by way of combination at first, until they had opportunity afterwards to purchase a Patent for themselves. The laws by which they were governed were those of England, unless in some particulars, which those laws could not reach, in which cases they made some orders and constitutions of their own. CHAP. XLIII. Ecclesiastical affairs, with other occurrences, at Providence and Rhode Island to the year 1643. Intercourse between them and the Massachusetts. As to matters of religion it was hard to give an exact account to the world of their proceedings therein, by any who have not been conversant with them from the beginning of their Plantations; yet this is commonly said, by all that ever had any occasion to be among 'The deed was signed by the Indian sachems March 24, 1638.-H. William Coddington, John Clark, and others, eighteen in all.-H. Shawomet, or Warwick, was purchased of the natives, 1636.-H. by Gorton and his adherents, in 1642.-H. |